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Featured Insights & Perspectives
November 2021
Climate Change Investing
Evaluate measures asset owners and managers are taking to mitigate climate risk in their investment processes.
October 2021
Diversity and Inclusion
Use this white paper to explore measures asset owners and asset managers are taking to promote diversity and inclusion (D&I) within the financial services industry.
September 2021
Advisor Use of Alternative Investments in 2021
Access this white paper to understand advisors’ allocations to alternative investments and explore what barriers to their use remain.
September 2021
Best Practices for Advisors When Working with Women Investors
Access this white paper to gain actionable insights from successful financial advisors into how practices can work effectively with women investors across three key areas of the client experience.
August 2021
Improving Client Experience: Customizing with Direct Indexing
Access this white paper to learn more about direct indexing, key players and assets under management, growth projections, and market adoption.
April 2021
Global Retail Investors and ESG
Explore retail investor demand for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. This white paper provides detailed insight into the factors and forces influencing retail investor demand for ESG and takeaways for managers focused on ESG product development.
April 2021
Direct Indexing and the Unfulfilled Promise of Tax Efficient SMAs
For decades, the financial services industry has touted the customization of managed accounts, yet only partially delivered on that claim. Direct indexing may change that.
October 2020
Private Banks: What COVID-19 Means for Product Choice
Private banks around the world are having to review their product offerings in response to the great uncertainty caused by the combination of COVID-19, U.S.-China tensions, and Brexit. This white paper provides an overview of the changes underway in Europe, the U.S., and Asia.
August 2020
The Evolving Role of Behavioral Finance 2020
As market volatility escalated, advisors increasingly turned to behavioral finance to help keep clients invested and focused on their long-term goals.
June 2020
Advice in Adversity
In this white paper, Cerulli explores how advice providers can best equip their advisor-clients to quell the worries of investors and ensure they adhere to their still-relevant long-term investment goals.
June 2020
Communications with Institutional Clients in a New, Virtual, World
The outbreak of COVID-19 has presented a multitude of challenges to the institutional asset management industry, but many asset managers are adapting to new strategies to keep the status quo.
May 2020
Mitigating the Impact of Advisors’ Behavioral Biases
Advisors can improve their portfolio construction and management processes by acknowledging that they are subject to many of the same behavioral biases that they hope to help investors avoid.
April 2020
Global Alignment Around the "E" of ESG Takes Form
Exposure analysis is rapidly becoming a staple metric for institutional investors and may represent the most logical focal point for firms in the early phases of building out processes in response to client demand.
February 2020
Asset Management in China 2020
China’s asset management industry is changing rapidly, following a series of reforms and market liberalization policies. In the post-“super guidance” era, more players are deepening their participation in asset management, such as banks and foreign firms.
February 2020
Private Assets: Cause for Both Celebration and Caution
Investor demand is set to keep rising, but so too is competition.
June 2019
Responsible Investment in Hedge Funds: The Growing Importance of Impact and Legacy
Responsible investment (RI) is among the most prominent themes in asset management today. Investors and managers are paying ever more attention to the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, mirroring the concerns of wider society.
June 2019
The State of the ETF Industry in Europe 2019
ETFs have been available for almost three decades, but have only recently started to gain traction among European investors. ETF asset growth in Europe has been significant in recent years. ETF assets grew from €256 billion in 2012 to €635 billion at the end of 2018, a 148% increase.
April 2019
Derisking DB Plans in Flux
Substantial volatility in late 2018 and early 2019 highlight the challenges and risks many corporate defined benefit plan sponsors face
March 2019
The Neglected Generation
Due to the aging population of the industry’s most heavily targeted clients, developing relationships with the next generations of potential investors is paramount.
February 2020
Advisor Portfolio Construction: Building Risk-Conscious Portfolios
After a long run-up in equity markets and given low yields, advisors are focused on risk management—and specifically ensuring that clients avoid a permanent impairment of capital.
February 2019
Subtract, Add, Multiply – The Formula to Efficiency
Wealth management providers are experiencing an increased demand for comprehensive advice while their most productive advisors approach retirement. Overcoming these constraints will require the deployment and adoption of enhanced wealth management technology platforms.
March 2019
OCIO at an Inflection Point: Strong Growth Ahead, but Institutions Are Demanding More
This is Cerulli’s first dedicated research initiative covering asset owners using the support of an OCIO provider.
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More White Papers
2018
The Disruptive Effects of Free Model Portfolios
Large asset management firms are aggressively promoting free asset allocation models, threatening to disrupt the market position of third-party strategists and turnkey asset management providers (TAMPs).
Setting the Stage for Prudent Growth in China
China’s asset management industry is going through a sea change, triggered by regulations focussing on financial stability and market liberalization. Probably the most far-reaching yet is the super guidance, introduced in April 2018, with the potential to alter various market segments in the coming years.
Regulation Propels Subadvisory to New Highs in Europe
The European subadvisory market is growing rapidly, totaling approximately €485 billion (US$581 billion) at the end of 2017.
Distribution Channels Key as Europe's Hedge Fund Revival Continues
Hedge funds have come to realize that launching UCITS versions of their strategies can dramatically increase their standing--globally as well as in Europe--and the past three years have seen many enter the alternative UCITS space with great success. These new entrants, equipped with a wealth of expertise and specialist strategies, have driven up the quality and choice of UCITS funds available to investors.
The Twilight of the Product Acronyms: Emerging unified advisory platforms will simplify the taxonomy of managed accounts and usher in important changes to the industry
Several large managed account sponsors have combined their disparate managed account products into unified advisory platforms (UAPs). This trend will alter the way asset managers and sponsors categorize and analyze the industry, and it will accelerate significant changes already happening in the managed account space.
2017
Educating U.S. Advisors to Practice What They Preach: Increasing Adoption of Risk-Managed Strategies
U.S. advisors may not always be protecting their clients sufficiently from downside risk. It may be that advisors don’t understand alternate options/strategies outside of fixed income and cash to manage portfolios in down markets. Therefore, advisors need to learn alternative ways to manage downside risk for their clients. Asset managers should seize this as an opportunity.
Tapping Asian Consultants for Mandates
Notwithstanding investment consultants' changing business models, Cerulli believes it will be critical for managers to remain on consultants' radars. With the persistent uncertain macro environment, institutions will be forced to look for consultants' expertise in selecting managers for sophisticated, exotic, and low-cost strategies to boost returns on their investment portfolios.
Rethinking Risk for U.S. Millennials
Engaging with Millennials in the U.S. has become a major strategic priority among financial services providers, but firms could be undermining their long-term opportunity with this cohort by defaulting them into unsuitable investments.
U.S. Broker/Dealer Product Consolidation: Shrinking Asset Manager Opportunities
B/Ds have used the DOL Conflict of Interest Rule as pretext to cut back the number of investment products available in their systems. This compounds the secular trends of fee compression and increased competition for asset managers. Asset managers must dispassionately evaluate their existing product lines to reposition their organizations for future success.
Partnering for Success in Asia
Product partnerships are gaining traction across Asia, as fund houses wake up to the fact that they can no longer be a one-trick pony in terms of investment strategies. Having a broad suite of products matters in volatile and unpredictable markets, and is necessary to meet ever-changing investor needs. However, not all firms can excel in everything—which is where partnerships come in.
Europe's IFA Markets Post-MiFID II
Having been reshaped significantly by various pieces of regulation over the past few years, Europe’s independent financial advisor (IFA) markets now face the implementation of MiFID II in January 2018. Many industry players and commentators are branding the updated version of the directive counterproductive, warning that it will hurt IFAs. Cerulli, however, is more positive, in keeping with our optimistic view of the industry’s long-term prospects.
A Multi-Asset Approach to the U.S. Multiemployer Pension Challenge
The current situation for multiemployer plans (MEPs) is acute and demands immediate action. Declining MEPs need a specialized investment and asset allocation approach to their portfolios. The first benefits reductions for an individual plan were approved by the U.S. Treasury Department in late 2016. With the decline of multiemployer plans, the investments and particularly the costs incurred by plans are coming under increased scrutiny.