Our investment and credit process
Our investment approach
Spectrum Asset Management is one of the largest specialized managers of preferred and capital securities in the United States, with more than 30 years of active management in preferred and capital securities under a variety of credit, interest rate, evolving regulatory, and market conditions. We have deep and broad experience analyzing, managing, and pricing complex security structures.
Our investment and credit process
Explore our featured fixed income strategy.
To help you diversify your opportunities, we continually review fixed income markets to identify and offer strategies to meet your objectives.
Preferred and Capital Securities
Finding higher-quality issuers throughout the preferred and capital securities universe, while diversifying across the credit spectrum.
Sustainable investing approach
When it comes to sustainable investing, we empower investors by offering choice, confidence, and flexibility.
We believe that stewardship is an important consideration in issuer analysis and that the inability or reluctance to address material ESG challenges could negatively affect a company’s credit profile. ESG assessments and research are incorporated into our proprietary fundamentals-based credit model, which helps inform our broader credit analysis and issuer recommendations.
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Our mosaic approach to ESG research includes third-party research, company’s ESG policies and goal disclosures, rating agency research, engagement with a company’s management, and more.
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Tiered-risk approach (low to high) measures the severity of ESG issues, which is part of the qualitative assessment in our proprietary credit analysis. ESG risks and opportunities are weighed, along with other qualitative and quantitative credit metrics.
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We use a negative screening process to avoid the worst performing and controversial companies.
Get to know our fixed income investment teams.
Our fixed income investment teams have a track record of solving for a wide range of personalized investor objectives.
Principal Alternative Credit
A seasoned investment team with significant credit investment experience across all major industries and market cycles, focused on providing our global investment base access to private credit solutions.
Principal Finisterre
As a specialist emerging market debt manager committed to delivering solutions that can perform in any market condition, the team utilizes a unconstrained, time-tested approach to managing income, volatility, and liquidity.
Principal Fixed Income
A global platform of integrated and specialized teams focused on delivering innovative, actively managed total return and yield-oriented investment solutions through capabilities that span all major fixed income sectors.
Principal Morley
Specializes in managing capital preservation strategies and designing customized stable value solutions through a risk-managed, multi-stage construction approach, incorporating a proprietary optimization model.
Get the latest insights.
The “pull toward par”
3 min
Looking ahead, investors may see potential price and income benefits from the “pull toward par.”
2025 Spectrum Outlook
We believe global preferred and capital securities are well-positioned to manage the economic conditions of…
By
L. Phillip Jacoby, Joe Urciuoli, and Manu Krishnan, CFA
Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Fixed‐income investment options are subject to interest rate risk, and their value will decline as interest rates rise. Risks of preferred securities differ from risks inherent in other investments. In a bankruptcy preferred securities are senior to common stock but subordinate to other corporate debt. Preferreds also contain risks including coupon deferral risk, credit risk, call risk, conversion risk and write-down risk.
ESG integration is considered across all actively managed asset classes, with the approach determined by each investment group’s process. This information is specific to the strategies managed by the individuals providing this content and various investment teams across Principal may have differing views of this approach.
Spectrum Asset Management, Inc. is an affiliate of Principal Global Investors.