Asset Management
Cerulli Notes Seismic Shift In How Asset Managers Distribute Products
More than half of asset managers in the US no longer organize their sales force by distribution channels, as the rise of fee-based platforms, consolidation and new technology shake up how this industry operates.
More than half of asset managers in the US have moved away from organizing their sales force by distribution channels, as the rise of fee-based platforms, consolidation and new technology shake up how this industry operates, according to research.
Cerulli Associates, which looked at marketing and sales organizations in the US investment industry, examined structure, staffing budgets, branding, advertising, websites, social media, wholesaling trends, and RFPs (requests for proposals).
"Exactly 20 per cent more asset managers are not channelizing their salesforce today compared to 2011," Pamela DeBolt, associate director at Cerulli, said in a note about the firm’s findings.
"The number of asset managers reporting that they are not channelized jumped from 31 per cent in 2011 to 51 per cent in 2013," she said.
The report is called US Product Marketing and Sales Organizations 2013: Supporting Distribution with a Multi-Faceted Marketing Plan.
"For two decades, firms were organizing their sales forces by segmenting the industry into distribution channels, and assigning territories to wholesalers based on a combination of geographic factors and channel attributes," DeBolt continued.
"Firms are no longer able to rely on the classification of their clients into neat groups of channels that share similar characteristics," DeBolt said. "Firms are organizing their sales efforts around their key accounts and most promising client relationships, with key account managers playing an increasingly important role and wholesalers relying on them more,” she said.
As part of the trend, firms may rely on hybrid wholesalers more often, Cerulli said. The hybrid wholesaling role tends to focus on niche areas of distribution, rather than channels. Cerulli said it expects the hybrid role to remain important as asset managers try to maximize the productiveness of field wholesalers.
