Welcome to the investment operations content channel sponsored by SEI. Here you will find frequently updated features on future industry trends and operational issues for asset managers globally, with a focus on private equity, private debt, real estate and hedge fund managers.
Founded in 1968, SEI became a US public company in 1981 and is listed on the U.S. NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol SEIC. With our corporate headquarters based in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a significant presence in London and Dublin, our 3800+ employees serve asset managers, institutional investors and financial institutions around the globe.
To help investment managers compete and succeed in an environment of escalating challenges, risks and complexity, SEI Investment Manager Services division provides the sophisticated operating capabilities and services needed to optimise their business performance across key product structures, asset classes and domiciles. Alternative and traditional asset managers worldwide currently entrust over USD1 trillion in assets with us.
Following on from the GP survey it produced earlier this year, SEI once again partnered with Preqin, this time to garner the views of investors to understand how they approaching alternative asset investing.
As investment managers juggle a variety of priorities in order to continue to evolve their business model, trying to balance where to spend operating budget on internal resources versus outsourcing has become a critical consideration. In many ways, the advances in technology and the sheer number of outsourcing providers in the marketplace have given COOs of investment firms much more choice for consideration.
As popular as the alternative investments industry remains, attracting and retaining investors at a time when asset classes are converging means that managers need to constantly think about how best to differentiate themselves.
For non-US fund managers wishing to tap into the US retirement marketplace, setting up a Collective Investment Trust (CIT) could be an attractive proposition, given the growth of defined contribution (DC) assets. Thanks to their ease of set-up, speed to market, and share class flexibility, CITs are enjoying a renaissance period.
Attend almost any financial industry event today and the chances are a panel discussion will refer to blockchain and the transformation opportunities it could afford the industry. It has become a buzzword, a term that one has to pretend to understand and nod sagely whenever it comes up in conversation. If you don't understand blockchain, you're not in the club, cast aside as a technological Luddite.
Increasingly, the search for alpha is pushing asset managers into the furthest corners of financial markets. New asset classes, new instruments and new geographies are conspiring to place huge pressure on pre-existing operating models as managers struggle to cope with the volume of investment data. Whereas previously the front office operated independently from the middle and back office, all three are converging to handle the data management task.
The life of the Chief Compliance Officer is not getting any easier with respect to the many regulatory and compliance demands placed on today’s alternative fund management community.
Alternatives have become a more mature option for institutional allocators, yet the reporting obligations fueled by the constantly evolving regulatory landscape has become a challenge for a large number of alternative fund managers.
One of the persistent pain points for alternative fund managers is finding a way to streamline the investor onboarding process by automating the subscription document process. To date, this has remained a notoriously inefficient and error-prone set of processes, stymieing the ability for managers – both hedge funds and PERE funds – to bring investor capital into funds and put that capital to work in a timely fashion.
Meaningful conversations create value. With the proliferation of information sharing and communications platforms, ranging from Vine and Instagram to Snapchat, Dropbox, Pinterest and, of course, Twitter, individuals and businesses (think fashion houses, advertising agencies, media organisations) have many ways to connect and interact across the globe.