Hello from an AM and Planning Consultancy young professional

[sw20001]

Hello!

This all feels a bit narcissistic (!) so I'm keeping this brief. I am introducing myself on here in case any viewers are interested in a career in asset management or consultancy and want to contact me. I am 22 years old in my third year of uni, so looking to help out people get up on their feet.

My professional background:
-Full time for 1 year at Quod, a London-based planning consultancy
-Part time for 2 years at same planning consultancy
-Summer internship at Advent International, in their subsidiary hedge fund called Sunley House
-Summer internship at a boutique investment manager
-'Relationship Associate' grad offer holder from same boutique investment manager
-Campus recruiter for Dartmouth Partners. Assessing CVs, cover letters and screening student candidates for interviews at boutique IB, PE, AM and real estate firms

Feel free to ask me anything relating to the above

 

[JustAnotherHuman1]

Why is it narcissistic to introduce oneself? Welcome to the community. What will you do as a relationship associate? Quite different from the usual investment banking role.

 

[sw20001]

Why is it narcissistic to introduce oneself? Welcome to the community. What will you do as a relationship associate? Quite different from the usual investment banking role.

Thank you JustAnotherHuman!

I suppose what is conventionally understood by the term relationship associate in asset management is someone who deals with clients needs, ensuring they are happy and understand the funds’ performances. In my case, our clients are institutional investors, meaning they are pension funds, retail banks, endowment funds, charities, family offices or funds of funds managers etc. They generally have their finger on the pulse of markets and may be simultaneously invested in dozens of other managers so are quite demanding and niche in their requests for particular performance indicator data. Relationship management is less easy to automate in this context as opposed to how it might be when dealing with individuals or less financially literate organisations. At entry level, client relations therefore involves a lot of hunting down requested information, whether that be a quick Excel analysis, a specific report or commentary. This is also hard to automate due to the fact that institutional clients each have significant sums of money invested in you and so expect tailored communications. This can be mundane at times but the idea is that after a couple of years you will be able to anticipate requests, build up relationships with some clients, and with this knowledge, begin pitching the firm to prospects and cross-selling funds to existing ones. That may take the form of a Zoom call, a board room meeting, or travelling to the other side of the world (yes, my boss still does this post-pandemic).

Where my role veers from these conventions is as a result of the small size of the firm I will be working for. My immediate team of 5 is responsible for ANY clients ex-US, while the rest of the company is almost entirely based in and responsible for US coverage. Different time zones and cultures means we can be pretty autonomous in how we deal with clients. This has created an innovative environment where the team is well versed in picking up marketing, sales, tech and research tasks. This saves processing a request back and forth through multiple teams. Besides responding to client emails as and when they come in, there are longer term projects. As an intern, I was heavily involved in improving automation by harnessing data analytics tools - I see my python abilities coming in handy in the future. I’d say that is pretty unusual for someone working in clients relations/sales where this might be left to data analytics or IT teams. Heavy collaboration with them instead of delegating means we get things working exactly as we want them to.

The firm also prides itself on culture and its ROWE (results only working environment). If you get the job done, you can get it done however you like: if you work better writing emails in your bed at 11pm than at 9am at your desk, you can do that and show up late the next morning. There is no face time, and no rule that you ever have to attend an internal meeting. School pick up times are respected and people taking 2 hour lunch breaks is not unusual. All this freedom seems too good to be true and might raise alarm bells but it’s still expected you deliver and people do because they are happier with their personal lives and work incredibly efficiently in the hours that they are hitting the desk. Off the back of this, contribution to culture is important and actually determines part of your bonus. Organising charity fundraisers, socials and team lunches is encouraged.