During the past 6 months, remote selling has become a fact of life in the asset management industry. This shift, while necessary, has been an unwelcome one for many firms, with a significant number of distribution leaders champing at the bit to get their salespeople back on the road. According to a recent SS&C survey, nearly 9 in 10 asset managers said that, if given the choice between their salespeople having only in-person meetings or only remote meetings, they would choose in-person meetings.
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In the current landscape, asset managers must differentiate their offering or risk losing sales, market share or product placement. Whether it be new product structures or investment strategies, firms continuously innovate from a product development perspective to discover, demonstrate and defend their differentiators, whether those differentiators are performance, price, process or personalization.
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In our recently released whitepaper, “After the Storm: Charting a New Course through Uncertainty,” we examine the importance of asset managers’ ability to provide products and solutions that are unique and differentiated. This is especially true given that, in the pursuit of goal-oriented outcomes, the market will likely place an even greater emphasis in the coming years on asset allocation at the expense of individual funds and strategies. We emphasize the importance of product, along with culture and business strategy, in the creation of a disruption-resilient business, and we discuss how asset managers should be thinking deeply about how they will work with wealth managers to provide investment ideas that incorporate their intellectual capital in a low return environment that is increasingly cost conscious.
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While we don’t know when the business world will return to some sense of normalcy, we know a time will eventually come when offices are reopened and in-person meetings will resume on scale. And while we don’t know precisely how much will change for wealth managers and asset managers, advisors in our recent SS&C Advisor Insights survey, conducted in association with Horsesmouth, expressed that fundamental changes are happening and will continue once they reopen their offices to asset managers.
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New regulations, break-through technology, changing consumer behavior, another global pandemic—what will be the next big disruption for the asset management industry? Because there will certainly be one.
In our new "After the storm: Charting a new course through uncertainty" whitepaper, we talk about how a well-defined culture is critical to thriving amid disruption. It keeps a company united in the face of challenges, with employees aligned and working toward a common goal. And it acts as a reliable compass to guide employees’ decisions and actions, so they can accomplish their goals faster and more effectively. In fact, research shows companies with a strong culture generate four times the revenue growth of companies without one.
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Disruption across the asset and wealth management industry has forced industry players to navigate enormous upheavals over the last several years. Despite this disruption, many firms have been slow to adapt—or at least adapt quickly—until the COVID-19 pandemic forced firms to radically change how they function at the most basic levels.
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Asset managers that assume every advisor in a distribution channel (e.g., “Wirehouse” or “RIA”) is the same are missing opportunities to better connect with their customers. Enhanced data and segmentation can help segment advisors for better coverage, more meaningful engagements and an improved customer experience. In our advisor surveys, conducted in association with Horsesmouth, we ask advisors across the wealth management landscape about their portfolios, their experience with asset managers’ product offerings and wholesaling teams, and other topics relevant to trends in distribution. In our most recent survey, we asked advisors “Please select what best describes your operational model/practice affiliation” and compared their answers to the ones they gave when asked “What type of firm do you work for” and found several variations.
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Despite the fact the markets have largely recovered most of their losses from late Q1, it is likely the rest of 2020 will remain challenging for passive and active managers alike. A variety of product wrappers, including traditional mutual funds, passive and smart beta ETFs, and SMAs will be tested. Already, there are once again calls to examine whether traditional mutual funds that invest in hard-to-trade assets such as high yield bonds should allow daily investor withdrawals.
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