Morgan Stanley's Jochims is guest on InsuranceAUM.com European direct lending podcast

Mark Jochims, Morgan Stanley Asset Management's head of European private credit, is the guest on an InsuranceAUM.com podcast episode published 19 October. Host Stewart Foley frames the episode, titled 'Filling the Gap: The Expanding Role of Direct Lenders in Europe,' around whether European private credit earns a place on an insurer's balance sheet rather than around market size.

Foley says growth alone is not a reason for insurers to allocate; he asks whether European private credit offers real diversification and relative value. He notes private credit has become a core part of many insurance portfolios while US-centered discussion stays on the US market, and Europe developed alongside a different banking system with different borrowers, sponsors, jurisdictions and supply and demand dynamics.

Foley's introduction credits Jochims with more than two decades across M&A, leveraged finance and private credit, and describes him as a founding member and partner at Arcmont Asset Management, where he built a European direct lending platform of more than €15 billion before joining Morgan Stanley in 2022.

The published excerpt stops as Foley puts his first question, after the biographical setup and before the discussion of diversification, relative value and balance-sheet fit; Jochims' answers are not in the available text. This publication has covered the format before: an InsuranceAUM.com episode in August paired an asset manager with an insurance distributor to make the case for railcar leasing in insurer portfolios. The test those episodes set for themselves is the same one a credit desk applies — an asset class has to survive the capital and correlation questions before the yield gets discussed.