Who we are

Read about what we do, our team, and company values.

What we do

We provide institutional investors with a comprehensive, cutting-edge analytics stack that transforms how they make their most important investment decisions.

Our solutions combine decades of research, proven real-world deployment, and production-grade technology to deliver actionable insights across expected returns, risk modelling, portfolio construction, scenario analysis, and more.

Founded by former leaders at the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, our team has spent over a decade building, refining, and operating advanced analytics at scale. Today, we make this institutional-grade infrastructure available to all investors — efficiently provided through modern tech infrastructure — at a fraction of the cost of building in-house.

Our clients include pension funds, reserve managers, hedge funds, asset managers, and other financial institutions worldwide.

Our Team

  • Pavol Povala

    Pavol Povala

    Managing Director

    Pavol is Managing Director at Allocation Strategy. He has an extensive track record of delivering advanced asset allocation capabilities and producing influential macro and finance research.

    Prior to Allocation Strategy, he spent a decade at Norges Bank Investment Management where he headed the Investment Research team. In this role, he built and managed a comprehensive asset allocation research and analytics platform. He delivered advanced research, models, and advice that informed strategic and tactical asset allocation decisions, in addition to macro risk management and portfolio stress tests.

    Before that, he spent several years in academia, where he published highly influential publications in the field of yield curve modelling, including papers in Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies. He started his career developing fixed income indices and related products.

  • Michael Chin

    Michael Chin

    Research Director

    Michael is Research Director at Allocation Strategy. He has extensive experience engaged in market-leading asset allocation Research & Development.

    Prior to Allocation Strategy, he was Lead Researcher at Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) providing in-depth research and analytics to investment committees, executive board, and portfolio managers. He made numerous high-profile contributions to the Discussion Notes series that were the analytical underpinning to advice to the Norwegian Ministry of Finance.

    Prior to NBIM, he was a financial economist at the Bank of England, where he developed asset pricing models to extract information from financial markets for advising the Monetary Policy Committee. He has a large volumne of publications in institutional research outlets and journals including the Journal of Fixed Income, Journal of Alternative Investments, and the Journal of Banking and Finance.

  • Drew Barnden

    Drew Barnden

    Technology Director

    Drew is Director of Technology at Allocation Strategy. He is highly experienced in developing advanced technical infrastructure for the delivery of models, data and research for asset allocation.

    He started his career at Norges Bank Investment Management in 2017. As a Senior Researcher, he developed expertise in cloud infrastructure, database management, and advanced programming techniques for managing large-scale datasets. He built infrastructure and analytics platforms using the latest tech solutions that are essential for underpinning advanced asset allocation analytics.

    He uniquely combines significant technical expertise with asset allocation modelling knowledge. He has built and maintained state-of-the-art allocation models and produced research across all asset classes, including in-depth advice on private equity investments.

  • Tobias Sproehnle

    Tobias Sproehnle

    Advisor

    Tobias is an Advisor at Allocation Strategy. He is is a serial entrepreneur and a recognised thought leader in benchmarks, indexing, data products as well as financial market infrastructure.

    Tobias has three decades of experience in financial markets. He currently builds PANTA, a SaaS company that is revolutionizing the index industry.

    He co-founded Moorgate Benchmarks, a white-label index calculation provider that he led to the company’s acquisition by Morningstar. Prior to that he served as CEO of Thomson Reuters Benchmark Services. Earlier in his career, he held senior roles at London Stock Exchange, IHS Markit and Deutsche Börse and was a key architect of the European regulatory framework for benchmarks. Tobias is also a board member and investor in several high-growth fintech companies.

Our Values

Rigour

We take a rigorous research-driven approach to solving allocation and investment problems. Our backgrounds combine the best of academia, central banking and investment management. Based on this principle, we have built a world-class research platform at the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.

Integrity

We hold ourselves to highest standards and look after client’s interests and objectives. We are dedicated to providing asset allocation and macro investing solutions, to be able to provide unbiased and independent insights.

Excellence

We never compromise on quality of our work. We would rather reject new clients or delay deployment of models than deliver subpar output.

Innovation

We have a demonstrated ability to push boundaries, think out-of-the-box and be on the cutting edge in asset allocation research. This is not self-serving, we translate it to high quality solutions for our clients.