Gaining new clients is vital. But it’s the existing clients who, as one senior fund manager told Amplify recently, ‘pay the mortgage’ for groups.

Alongside performance, service is a necessary condition for keeping clients. And in a competitive industry, poor service could be sufficient to lose business altogether.

Citywire has been asking fund selectors in Europe and the UK about service since 2017. Over the years, the questions have evolved (for example, ‘crisis event communication’ has been split into ‘market crisis communication’ and ‘fund and PR communication’). But the basic methodology has remained similar.

We ask fund selectors, this year about 600, to score asset management groups’ services. We give them 14 categories and ask them to rate these in terms of importance. They then select groups and score their performance in each category.

This year, promptness of information was rated as the most important for both European selectors and UK wealth managers.

Read on for the full list of categories and our analysis of regional differences and changing priorities.

The factors

Communication and reporting

• Factsheets, manager commentary and research
• Fund and PR communication
• Market crisis communication
• Promptness of information
• RFP response

Relationship management

• Accessibility of fund manager
• Product specialist expertise
• Salesperson client knowledge
• Salesperson contact
• Salesperson product knowledge

Supplementary services

• Bespoke data requests
• Collaboration in product development
• Product offering
• Usefulness of website

Citywire uses the data from these surveys to create bespoke, paid-for service reports for asset management groups. If you are interested in that please email Kate Doran and Douglas Brown. They will be delighted to talk to you.

But it is worth recognising the groups that have gone the extra mile to ensure their clients’ service expectations are met. Amplify is therefore delighted to share the winners of Citywire’s 2022 service awards. Groups have secured plaudits in the three service ‘supersets’, plus an overall award and one for most improved. You can find the names below.

Lessons

Before that, some top-line conclusions from this year’s data.

It is clear expectations are high and asset managers have work to do keeping clients happy.

There has been a fall in service performance across the industry this year. Factsheets, manager commentary and research saw the most marked decline in scoring, across European selectors and UK wealth managers.

In other areas, there have been regional differences.

According to European selectors, salesperson contact service levels have dropped the second most. Among UK wealth managers, product specialist expertise had fallen sharply.

In roundtable debates held for this project, we heard that our audience is frustrated by poor communication around changes to the sales team.

Doing better were scores for bespoke data requests, which rose across both studies.

Collaboration in product development and usefulness of website both increased in importance since last year, and performance has improved in the latter.

The winners

Europe

Communication and reporting: Vontobel Asset Management

Relationship management: Vontobel Asset Management

Supplementary services: Capital Group

Open choice: JP Morgan Asset Management

Most improved: Vontobel Asset Management

UK

Communication and reporting: T Rowe Price

Relationship management: Rathbones

Supplementary services: Ninety One

Open choice: Baillie Gifford

Most improved: Vanguard