Our Research Associate Consistently Underperforms the S&P

Part of a small HNW asset management team. I’ve had this nagging thought in me and would love opinions.

I’m part of a small team with a singular research associate. We are old school, long term, long only stock pickers. Yet, looking at performance, our RA has also consistently underperformed the S&P over the long term.

Our clients tend to be older, hold bonds for downside risk, etc. But the thing is that we even underperformed the S&P during massive down trends (like the recent pandemic, inflation surge).

If he can’t outperform the S&P during the good times (which is tough to do, granted) or protect downside risk during bad times, why tf would clients put money with him/us vs just throwing it into SPY and forgetting about it?