Not all infrastructure investments are made equal.

While the asset class is generally considered low risk, this isn’t always the case. There are an ever-growing variety of assets, contracts and geographical locations that combine to produce investments whose risk profiles can range from near bond-like low risk levels all the way through to those that look a lot like private equity.

Infrastructure investors and fund managers typically define an asset’s risk level by placing it in one of four categories, ranging from lowest to highest risk: core, core-plus, value-added and opportunistic.

When infrastructure’s attractive qualities for institutional investors are highlighted, it is usually in reference to core assets.

These assets, such as hospitals and regulated utilities, have stable cashflows and are typically based in established infrastructure investment markets in North America, Western Europe and Australia.

They provide low but stable retu