In advance of the event, Delano spoke with Sven Rein, a managing partner at Pancura. He speaks on Wednesday’s “It’s all about the investor” panel.
Aaron Grunwald: What do you want the audience to get most from the investor panel?
Sven Rein: An update related to evolvement of investors’ behavior and expectations. Our regulatory landscape has massively changed over the last years and investors have staffed up their teams with very skilled people. This is driving product development and adjustments in the operational setup of investment managers. Structural change of demography, technology and urbanization are challenging investment managers as well which leads to adaption in their strategies.
What is one concrete action that the fund industry or an individual fund firm could take in 2019 to improve investor communications?
Reporting to investors is a key communication tool, hence it is essential to understand the investors’ requirements to be able to pool the information concisely. Investors also always welcome short response time to their queries. Less complex fund structures and fee models would be beneficial initiatives as well.
What is a question that investors should be asking portfolio managers, but aren’t?
The numerous questions to fund managers asked by potential investors during the DD phase bears the risk that the key questions are overseen. I don’t believe that there is ‘the” question to be asked. It’s more about the focus on the team of the investment manager which gets the job done instead of paying too much attention to senior management or the business developer.
Aside from your own talk at the ALFI event, which speech or panel are you most looking forward to hearing, and why?
Build, buy or borrow--Which operating model is the key to success over the next 10 years? Running myself a 3rd party AIFM as service provider, it’s always an interesting discussion with our clients which operational model would make sense to set up in Luxembourg. Luckily Luxembourg has a perfect toolbox to build modular service models which fit in most cases and which could combine outsourcing with insourcing services.