The Industry

Since we launched the Citywire Pro Buyer Service study in 2019, feedback from the professional buyer community has helped us raise standards across the industry, identify key market trends, and track what is truly important to gatekeepers. Respondents are highly engaged with the study, with 202 professionals participating and leaving more than 1,000 comments on what groups do well and how they can improve. We’ve aggregated these responses to give you an in-depth analysis of how the industry has fared – along with an examination of your firm’s results – and what elements of service are most important to our audience. In our interactive service reports you can find analysis of your firm’s results, with a granular breakdown by factor, asset class and firm type, as well as actionable findings and five-year tracking.

Before our respondents scored the peer group across our service factors, we asked them to rate these criteria in terms of importance. Understanding the importance of the service factors allows us to categorize them as primary, secondary and tertiary. By juxtaposing the average performance scores achieved against their perceived importance, we arrive at a genuinely useful illustration of industry service standards.

The breakdown of the fund buyer respondents that took part in the study, firstly by firm type and secondly by job function.

Quadrant IV is where the industry needs to aim to be: by performing well in service factors considered highly important by the fund buyer sample. For the first time, the industry average performance for a service factor has made it into this quadrant this year - Product Specialist Expertise. Quadrant III, representing highly important factors but with lower performance scores, is where the most important service factor — Promptnessof Information— falls. Focusing efforts in this quadrant is extremely important. Quadrant II represents the industry performing highly in less important factors – arguably, in a world of limited resources, suggesting over-emphasis on factors in this quadrant. There are once again no service factors here. Quadrant I shows areas of lesser performance by the industry, but equally less perceived importance by the fund buyer sample.

to Citywire PRO BUYER Service 2023

welcome

The Entry process

The aim of the awards is to highlight third party asset managers who have provided the best service overall in the last 12 months.

Defining a valid score set: • • Defining asset managers eligible for consideration for the awards: • • • • The winner of the open choice award is determined by the highest total nominations to the question: 'And finally, please let us know the single 3rd party asset manager who has provided you with the best service overall in the last 12 months. You can choose any asset manager with active funds registered for sale in the US, not just your chosen asset managers in this study.' The winner of the most improved award is determined by the highest average positive percentage change between 2022 and 2023. Eligible groups must have received the minimum threshold of scores in both 2022 and 2023, and have shown an improvement in seven or more service factors. The winner of the best overall award is determined by having the highest average performance score across the service factors in 2023. The winners of the three superset awards are determined by the highest average score in a superset for an individual asset manager. To qualify, an asset manager must have more than the minimum number of required scores (20) in over half the factors contributing to the superset. Accordingly, asset managers must have over 20 respondents in any 4 of the contributing factors for the Communications & Reporting superset. For the Relationship Management and Supplementary Services awards, asset managers must have over 20 respondents in any 3 of the contributing factors. The supersets break down as follows: • • • The winners of the firm type awards are determined by the highest average score across all service categories by a qualifying asset manager from a minimum of 10 respondents within a particular firm type. The winners of the service factor awards are determined by the highest score in each service factor category by a qualifying asset manager.

Pro Buyer Service Awards 2023

Responses must be from individuals involved in fund selection, fund analysis and investment management/ advice from the wealth management & advisory community. If duplicate completed entries exist, the most recent is used.

Part of the peer group of active asset managers, as defined by being in the last year's peer group and receiving a minimum number of valid score sets or being one of the top 30 active asset managers in the USA by AUM - up to a limit of 40. FIrms that receive more than a threshold minimum number of valid score sets are eligible to qualify for an award. This threshold is defined as the average number of respondents by firm minus 1 standard deviation. In 2023, the average number of respondents per asset manager was 81. The standard deviation was 35, so the threshold for inclusion was 47. Only firms with a total number of respondents greater than 47 were considered for: • • • • • To qualify for the firm type awards, firms must receive a minimum of 10 votes from respondents - but there is no restriction on the total number of respondents. In 2023, there were insufficient respondents from Turnkey Programs for any asset management firm, so we did not hold this award. The firm type awards for 2023 are: • • • • Communications & Reporting • • • • • • Relationship Management • • • • • Supplementary Services • • • • •

Open choice Most improved Best overall The three superset awards: • • • The 16 service factor awards Banks & Bank Trusts Institutional & Subadvisory RIAs & Multi Family Offices Wirehouses & IBDs Manager Commentary & Research Fund & PR Communication Quality of Factsheets Market Crisis Communication Promptness of Information RFP Response Accessibility of Fund Manager Product Specialist Expertise Salesperson Client Knowledge Salesperson Contact Salesperson Product Knowledge Bespoke Data Requests Collaboration in Product Development Product Offering Risk & Portfolio Tools Usefulness of Website

Communications & Reporting Relationship Management Supplementary Services