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Learning from Lego – how we build client portfolios

“When I was your age” is a familiar phrase most children hear regularly.

I recently caught myself saying this whilst bemoaning how Lego has evolved from my childhood. “Back in my day”, at least in my memory, we only had a handful of different Lego building blocks and no instruction book. Children were left to their creative imaginations, albeit constrained by the limited number of pieces. Today’s Lego has a seemingly infinite number of building blocks alongside instruction books requiring an engineering PhD!

Portfolio construction today shares similarities with the evolution in Lego’s building blocks. Just as Formula One Lego didn’t exist in the 1980s, super-core infrastructure and senior direct lending were not part of the institutional investors toolkit. And whilst today’s allocators have an abundance of different building blocks, their instruction manuals haven’t kept pace.

Read more in our new ‘Expert Investor’ paper below:

For more information on Brightwell’s One Portfolio Approach, please get in touch with Andy at a.drake@brightwellpensions.com

Published:

18 / 06 / 2025

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Amy Mankelow​

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