MutualFundWire.com: Two National Accounts Posts Are Increasingly Popular

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Thursday, September 5, 2019

Two National Accounts Posts Are Increasingly Popular

Two types of national accounts roles appear to be increasingly popular with fundsters, though other roles' popularity is slowing.

Patrick Newcomb
Fuse Research Network
Director of Benchmark Research

17 percent of fund firms' national accounts leaders plan to increase the number of regular (i.e. neither senior nor junior) national accounts managers they have on staff over the next 12 months, up from 9 percent last year, according to Fuse Research Network's latest BenchMark Series study: "National Accounts 2019: A Guide to Benchmarking, Budgets & Productivity." And 4 percent of those leaders actually plan to hire an official "head of national accounts" in the next 12 months, while none had such plans last year.

On the flip side, 22 percent of fundsters' surveyed plan to add senior national accounts managers, down from 38 percent last year. 14 percent plan to add junior national accounts managers, down from 20 percent last year. And none plan to add due diligence research analysts to their national accounts teams, down from 18 percent last year. Like last year, no fundsters surveyed plan to add due diligence research managers to their national accounts team.

Pat Newcomb, director of benchmark research at Fuse, puts the change in the context of "this whole shift to hiring more experienced national account managers."

For the study, the Fuse team surveyed fundsters from 44 fund firms, fundsters in charge of national accounts. The sample was roughly even split between small firms with under $20 billion in AUM each, mid-sized firms with between $20 billion and $50 billion in AUM each, and large firms with more than $50 billion in AUM each.

Only 38 percent of small fund firms and 20 percent of large firms plan to make national accounts staffing changes in the next months, Fuse found, down from 43 percent for each last year. Yet more mid-size firms plan to make changes, 85 percent this year, up from 57 percent last year.

The average national accounts budget fell 11 percent year-over-year to $5 million, the Fuse team found, thanks largely to a drop in the average national accounts budget (now $7.3 million) at large firms. Yet budgets for small firms held steady at $1.4 million, and mid-size firms' budgets rose five percent to $5.8 million.

The full report covers a host of national accounts topics and trends, including: total staffing levels, due diligence models, compensation, time allocation, skill importance, platform selection criteria importance, reporting and organizational structure, and more.

Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=60205

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