In a year that’s lacked so much of what makes our global CAIA community special—namely, the in-person gatherings of local chapters and the knowledge sharing that takes place at our bigger events around the world—we strived to continue to engage our membership, gleaning their expert insights and exchanging the best practices that help us all better ourselves as alternative investment professionals.
As part of our efforts, we recently conducted a survey of CAIA Members on what we believe to be one of the most crucial elements of the investment profession, no matter the asset class: manager due diligence. Thanks to the hundreds of you who participated, we collected some noteworthy results, which we’ll share in the months ahead, starting with a webcast tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 9, at 11am EST, and again on Friday, Dec. 11 at 11:30am HKT. (If you haven’t yet registered or want to watch the replay after the event, you can do so by signing up here.)
As a quick summary, our Members confirmed that qualitative factors tend to be just as important as (or for some asset classes, more important than) quantitative factors when selecting managers. Our Members who play an allocator role also highlighted the importance of operational factors in their investment decisions, particularly when evaluating emerging managers. Likewise, we discovered some key areas where managers and investors diverged in how they think about due diligence and manager selection.
Many of our Members who took the survey also expressed that they would like additional support from CAIA in navigating the due diligence process. Please know that we’ve heard you, and we intend to showcase the elements of our alternative investments curriculum that may be most helpful in your due diligence work and to create new, actionable content that helps improve manager selection processes across our industry.
We invite you to tune into the webcast this week, listen to the results, and send your thoughts to us by email at content@caia.org. Which results surprised you most? Do you see issues or flaws in any of the key takeaways? What other questions should we have asked? Following these webcasts, we’ll roll out more results from the survey along with your input.
We’re encouraged by the willingness of our Members to share their insights with our broader community, and we will continue to shine a spotlight on our Members’ experiences and opinions as we commit to greater transparency and fiduciary responsibility in our work as alts professionals.