Markets are moving fast, AI is reshaping how investment decisions get made, and climate strategies are being held to a higher standard than ever. At the latest GKB FocusTalk in Zurich, three practitioners shared their perspectives on where professional asset management stands today and where it's heading.
On a warm June noon, GKB and aisot hosted the latest GKB FocusTalk at the Widder Hotel in Zurich, bringing together professional investors, asset managers, and wealth management practitioners. The summer heat kept no one away. The room was packed.
The format brought together three speakers, three lenses on the same challenge: how to navigate today's markets with clarity, the right tools, and a credible long-term view.
A CIO's take on the current environment
Daniel Lüchinger, CIO of Graubündner Kantonalbank, opened with a macro outlook and walked the audience through GKB's current thinking on markets and asset allocation. Lüchinger offered a grounded read on the forces shaping portfolios right now, from rate dynamics to geopolitical uncertainty, and what they mean for professional investors making allocation decisions today.
Building, testing, refining: what agentic AI looks like in practice
Stefan Klauser, Co-Founder and CEO of aisot, opened with a presentation before taking the audience into a live demonstration of the aisot platform.
He used the aisot agent on the AI Insights Platform to build an investment universe from scratch, test different portfolio strategies, and ask the agent how to optimize the allocation to achieve a better outcome. He also showed how the agent can generate a monthly portfolio commentary in minutes, turning what is typically a time-consuming manual task into a quick, structured output. The result was a real-time look at what agentic AI actually looks like in a professional investment workflow, not a concept, but a working tool.
"The value isn't just speed. It's the ability to iterate, to build, test, challenge your own assumptions, and refine, in a way that simply wasn't possible before. That changes how decisions get made.", Stefan Klauser says.
The agent is designed to support investment decision-making across the full workflow, from signal generation and universe construction to portfolio optimization and explainability.
Investing in climate leaders
The third perspective came from Daniel King-Robinson, a GKB Fund Manager of a climate leaders equity fund. His topic was timely: how to make climate-oriented investment strategies work in a market environment where ESG tailwinds have weakened and the pressure to justify sustainability mandates has grown.
King-Robinson's fund invests in 45 to 50 companies that are considered climate leaders within their respective sectors, with a focus on supporting a low-carbon economy across the full value chain. His session addressed the practical question of how to anchor climate strategies robustly in a portfolio, not just as a values statement, but as a credible investment thesis that can withstand scrutiny.
Why these three conversations belong together
What made the FocusTalk format work was the combination. Macro context without implementation clarity is incomplete. AI tools work best as decision support, to test a view, flag opportunities and risks, or get a second opinion. And climate strategies are most powerful when they're built on a rigorous investment framework, not just a values statement.