Where the Industry Meets the Moment: What’s Ahead at ICI’s 2026 Leadership Summit
Asset management leaders are operating in an environment where business strategy is increasingly shaped by public policy. Firms are weighing product opportunities, tax and regulatory changes, and the practical implications of new technology, all against a backdrop of trade tensions, inflation concerns, and geopolitical risk. The result is a broader and more demanding set of leadership questions than the industry has faced in years.
ICI’s 2026 Leadership Summit, convening April 29 through May 1 in Washington, DC, brings together CEOs, COOs, heads of distribution, chief product and marketing officers, senior strategists and communicators, legal and compliance leaders, and independent directors for three days at that intersection. The program is built for the people making consequential calls across these dimensions simultaneously.
Washington Up Close
The Summit’s location is deliberate. This year’s program reaches well beyond fund regulation into the broader economic policy landscape shaping business decisions across the economy.
Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, will join ICI President and CEO Eric Pan for a conversation on the administration’s economic agenda and the outlook for fiscal, trade, and monetary policy. Senator Ted Cruz will address the legislative environment in Washington, including policy priorities that bear directly on capital formation, investor access, and the industry’s long-term growth.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig will sit down with Pan for a timely discussion of the regulatory landscape for derivatives, digital assets, and market innovation. With the agency also drawing attention for matters beyond the traditional fund space, the conversation promises to offer a broader view of how one key regulator is approaching a fast-moving policy environment.
What Senior Leaders Are Facing
Many of the Summit’s conversations are really about what leadership looks like at a moment when firms are being pulled in several directions at once. A panel of recently appointed CEOs and leaders—from Allspring, Artisan Partners, Northern Trust Asset Management, and Global X—will speak to the realities of stepping into the top job during a period of rapid change. A separate session bringing together leading investment officers will look at the global economy, investment opportunities, and the geopolitical backdrop shaping markets.
Private markets are one of the clearest examples of why this moment feels so consequential. As firms push further into private credit and other private assets, the opportunity is obvious—but so are the hard questions around valuation, liquidity, product structure, and the policy push to expand access through 401(k) plans and other channels. That is why the discussion among leaders from Schwab Asset Management, PIMCO, Carlyle, and Nomura Asset Management should be one of the most closely watched conversations on the program.
The same goes for technology and product development. Sessions on AI, tokenization, and innovation will focus less on buzzwords than on the practical questions firms are now confronting: where new technology is changing workflows and decision-making, how quickly adoption is happening, and how firms are building products with lasting strategic value.
The program also draws in voices from beyond asset management. Summit Chair Jenny Johnson of Franklin Templeton will open the conference and moderate a fireside chat with Mary Barra, Chair and CEO of General Motors, on leading a large, established company through technological change. The Summit will also mark the approaching 250th anniversary of American independence with a luncheon conversation on the ideas that shaped the nation’s founding and their continuing relevance for business and public life. A Thursday evening reception at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, steps from the White House, further underscores the Summit’s Washington setting.
Where Leadership and Policy Meet
The Leadership Summit reflects ICI’s role in Washington. The conference sits at the intersection of industry strategy, public policy, and market oversight, and its setting provides added weight. The presence of senior policymakers, regulators, economic officials, and business leaders on the program speaks to the range of conversations taking place and to the relationships that help bring those perspectives together.
That is part of what gives the Summit its particular standing on the conference calendar. It offers more than a series of speakers or panels. It creates a setting in which senior leaders can engage directly with the people shaping the environment in which they operate, while also hearing how peers across the industry are thinking about the same pressures and opportunities. The result is a gathering with a different kind of gravity—shaped as much by who is in the room as by what is on the agenda.