COVID-19, quiet quitting, talent shortages and sourcing, ghosting, revenue pressures, cost cutting, and global economic and political uncertainties, to name just a few of the factors managers need to juggle in these modern times. Disruptors in and of themselves, are exhausting to solve but make no mistake, asset managers do need to solve them. Layer in increasingly complex and often manually labor-intensive operating environments and overcoming these challenges becomes all the more daunting—and costly. In the end, and as different as they are topically, they all share one commonality; they have a significant impact on a manager’s ability to focus on their core remit—to produce favorable economic results for their clients.
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Non-traded REITs have been in the press of late. The most recent headline—the $4 billion investment by the University of California’s endowment fund (UC Investments) into Blackstone’s BREIT—has generated much discussion about the structure of the deal and the attractiveness of non-traded REITs in general.
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Investors need fund managers that can deliver optimal performance regardless of market conditions—something that has become increasingly difficult to achieve in recent years. Many managers may be so focused on the search for alpha that they miss an opportunity to add to their returns through tax-efficient investment strategies. Taxes are among the most influential portfolio performance factors, and as investors become increasingly tax-aware, they expect their managers to optimize their tax positions.
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For asset managers to stay relevant, it’s essential that they keep their fingers on the pulse of advisors’ concerns. Understanding what’s keeping advisors up at night, especially in turbulent market environments, enables firms to create timely content, guide wholesalers’ conversations with their clients and ensure their product development efforts align with advisors’ needs.
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SS&C Intralinks recently published the seventh annual 2023 LP Survey, in association with Private Equity Wire, to provide a global overview of limited partner (LP) sentiment as it relates to the performance and resilience of alternative asset portfolios. The findings cover a variety of themes influenced by economic and geopolitical challenges like rising interest rates, inflation, global energy-supply crisis, conflict in Ukraine and more. We asked 200 global investors for their responses to the pressing questions that general partners (GPs) want to know the answers to.
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Recent years have seen explosive growth in the retail market for alternative investments, or “Retail alts” in the shorthand of the industry. Once the domain of sophisticated, wealthy qualified investors, the alternatives marketplace is being demystified and democratized. According to RIA Intel, around 45% of private wealth advisors allocate some of their client assets to alternatives.
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Direct indexation and environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing aren’t as popular with financial advisors as industry news coverage would suggest—just two in five advisors have incorporated ESG into a client’s portfolio and only three in 10 advisors have used direct or custom indexing strategies with clients, according to our advisor research conducted in association with Horsesmouth.
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Asset allocators, whether they invest in hedge funds, private equity, or other managed accounts and comingled funds, have to process a massive number of documents as a byproduct of those investments. Portfolios with 100 private investments receive an average of 4,000 documents annually from fund managers, including transaction and capital call notices, valuation statements and financial statements. These documents need to be immediately categorized and sorted, with their information captured and made accessible as needed. Manually processing these documents—a time-consuming endeavor that carries substantial risk for errors—is a major roadblock to producing a consolidated view of portfolio holdings.
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