![]() Investors are not at all happy with the quality of fund managers’ web presence, leading one investor to comment: “A Google search and a website visit are the first two things done when hearing from a new manager. ![]() “We don’t appreciate large documents and presentations,” commented another.įund managers need to invest in their websites, however. ![]() We are bombarded by emails and calls, and anything to make it easier for us would be great.” One respondent said that hedge fund IR teams “need to make it easier for investors to assimilate information. The only area where some investors said they were satisfied was with the frequency of updates. Forty-one percent said they were unhappy with information received, and another 38 percent were ambiguous. Overall, investors still feel hedge fund managers are falling short of expectations in the investor communications stakes, particularly in the quality of the information they were receiving. Interestingly, investors are less keen on video reports at this time. Group conference calls rank a distant third. Investors were asked their opinion on the format in which they preferred to receive fund manager reporting – the majority stated either newsletters/factsheets or email as their most preferable format. This also points to a lack of use of existing, cost effective technology to introduce a higher level of automation within the production process for presentations and fact sheets.įinally, some investors expressed frustration at the volume of unsolicited communications from managers they are not invested with, which often has the opposite effect to that intended. As hedge fund managers are forced to deal with more information, it is becoming more difficult and time consuming for them to keep their materials up to date using purely manual processes. Presentations are not being updated frequently enough, with over half of investors regarding this as ‘low quality’. ![]() Given that an effective comparison against peers in the market might actually benefit managers’ ability to differentiate and promote their funds more effectively (rather than simply referring to industry benchmarks or stock market indices), this is surprising. While managers seem to be meeting investor expectations in terms of reporting on holdings and allocation details, there are still some critical weak points.įoremost among these is the lack of knowledge of peers. The natural follow-on question is: Where can hedge fund managers improve? Allocators were asked to assess fund manager communications across a range of criteria. Given the number of investors who participated, this demonstrates that the hedge funds sector needs to provide not only more data, but better data. No investors who participated in the survey were ‘very satisfied’, and it is the overall quality of information which they are most critical of – 12 percent of investors claimed to be ‘very dissatisfied’ with the information they are receiving. Investors are not completely satisfied with the levels of communication they receive from the hedge fund managers they invest with. There is an opportunity here for IR professionals in the hedge funds industry to embrace some of the automation, security and data analysis tools currently available to enhance the role they perform, while saving valuable time to focus on more mission critical areas of their role. Yet the quality of informed communication and reporting that hedge funds will be required to provide by investors in the future is likely to only increase. Fund managers also remain largely unaware of the degree to which online newsflow is used for investor research, both positive and negative. Emphasis from investors is on what fund managers are telling them, not how frequently they report. A significant portion of the industry still seeks to struggle through with no dedicated IR staff or resources.īy contrast, investor expectations of hedge funds remain high, and frequently unfulfilled. The investor relations (IR) function within hedge funds is sometimes ill-defined, frequently being taken on by personnel with other duties, and covering a multitude of roles. Altogether, 109 investors and 126 fund managers took part in the research. The objective was to measure overall levels of satisfaction with the investor relations process, and in particular to see how effectively fund managers were engaging with investors. ![]() In the first half of 2016, we carried out a survey of hedge fund managers and their investors globally. ![]()
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