Kristen Doyle

Kristen Doyle, a partner with Aon Investments USA, serves as the firm’s global chief operating officer. As such, she is responsible for executing on and achieving Aon’s strategic initiatives, managing change as the business evolves, acting as a key decisionmaker in its growth strategy, and maintaining a strong culture of compliance and risk management. She also leads the firm’s public sector business as the public fund client solution leader. In this role, Doyle is responsible for new business development and helping to ensure that Aon has the right resources, research, and expertise available for this segment.

Prior to joining the firm in 2005, Doyle worked at Northern Trust in the custodial operations group for more than two years. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder and member of CFA Institute and the CFA Society Chicago. In 2017, she was named to CIO’s Knowledge Brokers list.

CIO: What new qualities do you look for in a manager/service provider given the pandemic’s financial and economic impacts?

Doyle: What is new for us, right before the pandemic and during, was looking for managers who are willing to work with us to develop custom solutions to invest in a niche part of the market or customize a strategy that is slightly different than what is available off the shelf. This has allowed us in this environment during the financial fallout from the pandemic to quickly take advantage of dislocations in the markets and earn strong returns for our clients.

CIO: What changes are you making to your asset allocation advice?

Doyle: Led by the UK, we are starting to take into account climate change scenarios in our asset allocation work and advice for clients. This hasn’t resulted yet in dramatic changes to our clients’ asset allocations, as it is early days, but we expect to continue building out that analysis for clients.

CIO: What do you think will be the biggest innovation in your industry in the next 10 years?

Doyle: I think responsible investing is going to be a significant innovation in terms of how it is incorporated into portfolios both at the manager level but also at the asset allocation level. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is already evolving quickly, and I think we are going to see a lot more innovation there, with strong financial impacts for investment programs.