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Agecroft Partners – Best North American Third Party Marketing Firm

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Agecroft Partners was founded by Don Steinbrugge, who has 34 years of experience in the institutional investment management industry, including previously serving as the head of sales for one of the world’s largest hedge funds and institutional investment management firms. 

“Agecroft has changed the model of hedge fund third party marketing,” says Steinbrugge. “Most third party marketing models are based on leveraging personal relationships and doing extensive entertaining. Ours has been to build a global brand with a reputation as an industry thought leader, strong institutional investment knowledge and representing high quality managers”

Agecroft Partners has been a prolific writer of industry thought pieces and white papers, having written or appeared in more than 500 articles in the last few years. Often asked to share their thoughts with the media on the hedge fund industry, they have also been a regular guest on Bloomberg Television and CNBC.

“This has helped us to attract some of the highest quality hedge fund managers to represent and has also allowed us to access many institutional investors that other third party marketers have difficulty accessing,” states Steinbrugge.

Last year was a good one for Agecroft, which saw it bring in around USD1.4 billion in assets for its clients with Steinbrugge confirming: “We were able to raise money from a number of prominent pension funds, family offices, consultants and endowments. We’re very happy with how 2017 played out and pleased that we had a number of hedge funds that performed well and were in demand. 

Some of these included CTAs, reinsurance, loan and fixed income strategies that were able to provide diversified, uncorrelated returns compared to the broader market. 

According to Preqin, some USD49.5 billion in net new assets came into the global hedge fund industry but the reality is, much of that capital is going to the biggest managers with the best brand names.

“Many investors get contacted by thousands of hedge fund managers a year, of which they might interact with a few hundred, organise follow-up meetings with 50 or so, and hire two. 

“Anyone can be successful at raising money if they have three things: a high quality product, a high quality marketing message and strong distribution. 

“The managers that we work with rely on the Agecroft brand to help them. Our job is to make sure managers articulate what their differential advantages are in a way that closes the gap between perception and reality,” comments Steinbrugge.

A major issue for the hedge fund industry is that even though there are a lot of great managers, many of them do a bad job of communicating what they do and as a consequence, perception falls below reality. 

“If you can close that gap and identify people who are particularly interested in that manager’s investment strategy, it can enhance the closure rate,” says Steinbrugge. “You have to give people a reason to want to meet with you. Not being pushy, maintaining a high level of integrity, being very knowledgeable about the industry: these are all important traits if you are hoping to meet the right people.” 

As Steinbrugge points out, this business is driven by brand. Most of the assets are going to the largest hedge fund managers. 

To that end, Steinbrugge says “we take our brand very seriously. If we add a manager to our platform, it is important they rank well across each of the evaluation factors that we use.”

On winning this year’s US award, Steinbrugge remarks: “We are immensely proud to have been recognised by our peers.” n

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