What happened at this year’s IMPower Fund Forum?

As investment managers grapple with a squeeze on margins, fund promoters are adopting new techniques and technologies to attract clients and protect market share…

Fund management marketers who have been kicking around the market for any length of time still lovingly refer to Informa’s flagship investment event as the Fund Forum.

However, the rebadged “IMPower incorporating Fund Forum” as it is now known has very much retained the pulling power of old at the 2023 event .

The well-attended event at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo took place at the end of June, with a strong programme and a packed exhibition hall. Delegates included senior marketers, CEOs, journalists, and the usual smattering of business developers on the conference floor.

Rationalising marketing spend

For investment marketers, discussions in the exhibition hall mirrored the panels in the seminars with an acute awareness of the pressure that remains on margins at fund groups of all sides. There was a large focus on brand investment, defensive marketing and the use of technology to evaluate return on marketing spend.

One session which struck a particular chord was the marketing communications panel on day two, led by Research in Finance CEO, Toby Finden-Crofts. The seminar opened with the release of some exclusive fresh findings from the company’s European Fund Selector Study, where fieldwork was conducted just three months earlier.

The study looked at the most valued types of marketing communication in the Pan European region.

Respondents to the company’s survey found that investment clients valued market insight content most highly, with 89% of respondents citing these as useful. Then came meetings with portfolio managers (86%), webinars (79%) and content on asset manager’s websites (78%).

Other forms of content which also were considered valuable to buyers of investment products included email newsletters (74%), educational content (72%) and whitepapers (71%).

While panellists in the session recognised the value of all of these assets, they underscored the importance of prioritising and using resources wisely.

Florian Uleer, head of EMEA wholesale at Columbia Threadneedle, said his company’s approach was to focus on the areas where the business has “credibility”.

“It is great if you can serve all of that, but it is very difficult,” he said. “If you do that stuff, make sure it is edgy, up-to-date and relevant. It can’t happen only once. It has to be consistent.”

Candriam’s head of global development reminded marketers to remember “why are you relevant,” underscoring the importance of linking marketing approaches back to an organisation’s value proposition and product set.

Personalised portfolios

It was evident at this year’s event that investment marketers are looking closely at ways to protect market share, manage costs, and transform product ranges.

For Schroders’ former global marketing head, Carolina Minio Paluello (pictured), these three themes crossed perfectly with her new focus as CEO of Arabesque AI.

In an interview with Financial Promoter, she described Arabesque AI as a tech company that enables investment managers and asset owners to finely-customise portfolios.

Arabesque’s technology allows companies to generate customised strategies down to a single stock.

For Minio Paluello, there is an urgency in getting this message out now. Asset managers are looking closely at how they can protect market share in a competitive marketplace while asset owners are looking for portfolios that better reflect their objectives. She can clearly see the external environment driving demand.

However, it is wealth managers where she is starting her marketing focus, due to the swiftly growing demand for bespoke solutions, driven by a new generation of investors who want to customise where they invest to align with their own beliefs.

“Wealth managers know that they need to provide for the next generation. At the moment, they say that they can do it, but the cost of manufacturing these portfolios is very high. I am saying we can do that at a much lower cost, using technology.”

Minio Paluello says she is structuring the marketing focus of the company to focus, initially, on wealth managers, before moving on to asset owners and, finally, asset managers.

Her logic is based on emerging attitudes towards technological transformation and her observations of how financial groups embrace change, informed by her previous roles at Schroders, Lombard Odier, Citi and Goldman Sachs.

Distribution focus

The transformation of distribution was a major theme at this year’s conference. For investment marketers, the discussions considered changing European regulation for distributed ledger technology and shifting buying behaviours affecting client acquisition through social media.

One theme repeated throughout the conference was how technology was likely to dramatically condense the chain of intermediaries that are currently involved in investment distribution in the coming years.

Speakers noted that the ongoing search for cost efficiencies at fund management groups, coupled with investor demand for more personalised investment choices, will likely drive change in the medium-term.

At the same time, delegates recognised that social media outlets could become a future buyers’ gateway replacing some of the fragmented distribution networks that are more familiar today.