The writing on the wall for traditional asset management

February 12, 2016

There were further reports this week of asset leakage from traditional asset managers, as evidenced by the net outflows from AMG Funds for the fourth quarter of 2015 of $6.8 bn, while Waddell and Reid had redemptions of $5 billion over the same period . These are, of course gross outflow figures, that do not reflect the inflows over the year, and in AMG’s case they reflect the abnormal case of Third Avenue fund, which itself accounts for a substantial portion of the redemptions.  However, it does beg the question as to whether traditional asset managers with only marginal value added over benchmarks are going to face ongoing attrition as investors focus on fees and value for money.