Emerging Markets Debt

Our emerging markets debt strategies employ a country-first approach and research-driven process, underpinned by a risk-focused mindset. 

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Understand our approach to emerging market investing.

Aegon AM US has invested in emerging markets for over 20 years. Supported by a dedicated emerging markets debt research team, we combine top-down and bottom-up perspectives with a focus on country allocations first, and issuers and securities second. Access to broader sector specialists brings a multi-faceted, analytical research rigor to the process. 

 

Using a disciplined and repeatable investment process, the investment team’s long-term perspective focuses on outperforming the benchmark over full market cycles and delivering competitive risk-adjusted returns. 

Mindset behind the management.

Our emerging markets debt portfolios are managed with the belief that: 

Country selection drives returns.

We conduct comprehensive country fundamental and macro analysis, define the long-term structural path for each country and opportunistically allocate across countries first, and issuers and securities second. 

Asset prices deviate from fundamental value.

We conduct rigorous analysis at the country, issuer and security levels to assess the interaction of fundamentals and price. Risk is oscillated tactically according to market sentiment.  

Markets over/under react to new information.

We have found that markets generally react in a predictable way to new information but with imprecise magnitude, creating a variety of opportunities for active managers. 

We let countries lead the way.


We believe country weighting is the largest driver of investment returns in an emerging markets debt strategy over the business and credit cycle. Allocations to countries are considered first and issuer and security types are evaluated second. All research recommendations begin with a country call – overweight, underweight, or neutral weight.  Qualitative and quantitative methodologies are incorporated into the process to understand market expectations, evaluate country fundamentals and understand gaps between fundamentals, market pricing and expectations for the specific market.  

 

These exercises provide context to assess asset pricing. Together, they help us determine the attractiveness of countries across the investment universe and ultimately guide our country allocations. 

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