What is CPP Investments’ Alpha Generation Lab
Posted on 01/15/2021
Sovereign wealth funds and public pensions often create innovation units to test new theories in ways to capture alpha or save costs. Canada Public Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) formed the Alpha General Lab for researching and investing in transformational alpha strategies across any asset class. Jonathan Briggs founded the Alpha Generation Lab at CPP Investments, before moving onto Delphia as Chief Investment Officer. The lab unit’s mandate is to develop significant advantages for CPP Investments in the search for alpha by accelerating innovative investment capabilities. The lab is accountable for conceptualizing, incubating, and building new alpha generating capabilities across the organization. Like Singapore’s GIC Private Limited’s moonshot unit, the CPPIB lab is spending time to develop its expertise in data science and machine learning. The lab hopes to utilize machine learning pipelines to generate actionable investment ideas and forecasts for the massive public fund.
Alpha General Lab works within an innovation ecosystem that includes academic, corporate and internal partners. Alpha General Lab sources and triages innovative ideas from both internal and external sources, implements a channel to funnel and advance those ideas, and provides a transparent feedback process. Once a new concept’s measurable alpha is proven through a proof-of-concept, the lab works with the relevant stakeholders to encourage and facilitate adoption.
