对冲基金营销人员会倒霉

Investor relations professionals are finding it challenging to secure clients as investors continue to pull billions of dollars out of hedge funds.

Attracting prospective investors was the most-cited challenge in asurveyof marketing and investor relations professionals by IR software provider Imagineer Technology Group and Hedge Fund Research.

The survey’s respondents work primarily in the alternatives industry, with 89 percent reporting that their firms offered hedge fund products. However, the survey also included staff at private equity, venture capital, and traditional asset management firms.

Regardless of firm size or assets under management, luring investors was seen as a top challenge by survey respondents. In the hedge fund industry, these challenges are further evidenced by five consecutive quarters of outflows, amounting to $62 billion redeemed by investors on a net basis between April 2018 and June 2019, according to HFR.

[IIDeep Dive:Most Hedge Fund Managers Failed to Raise Money Last Year]

“Managers who find it a struggle to attract capital stated reasons like difficulty reaching the right investors, offering enticing solutions, and articulating the fund’s value proposition,” the report stated.

Other challenges cited by survey respondents included the ability to retain and manage staff, managing processes between internal teams, and communicating with fund administrators.

Limited bandwidth was the top challenge reported by staff at firms managing $1 billion to $5 billion, who represented about 30 percent of total respondents. These firms have an average of three investor relations professionals on staff — a number that has remained stagnant over the last year despite salespeople’s concerns about their lack of bandwidth.

The only firms toadd IR staff在去年是最大的投资商店，那些运行50亿美元或以上的投资商店。然而，他们的平均总部超过了五到十一年。然而，即使在大型资产管理人员中，即使在大型资产管理人员中，带宽仍然被称为IR工作人员的2号挑战 - 他们的第1名挑战是预计投资者的需求。

According to the report, asset managers are responding to fundraising challenges and an increasingly competitive marketplace by developing more proactive investor relations strategies. Emerging and mid-sized managers — whose small IR teams “often take on fund marketing, IR, and operations roles” — said they emphasized frequent, transparent communications to “build trust early on with their investors and share as much detailed risk and portfolio information as possible,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, firms with larger IR teams reported that they have devised “targeted strategies based on geographic regions, investor types, and investment products to win new capital and foster existing investor satisfaction.” In addition, 28 percent of respondents said they have implemented client segmentation, customizing processes and service models based on investor qualities like size and client type. For instance, they have become more hands-on in onboarding high-net-worth investors or offered discounted fee structures in exchange for institutional capital.

“Of course, to successfully service these specialized offerings, the IR, investment management, and fund marketing teams all have to agree with the determined segmentation strategy and must have the people power to support it,” the report stated. “Accordingly, those respondents with client segmentation strategies have, on average, two more IR teammates compared to the average headcount of this year’s survey participants.”