fund of funds/manager due diligence investment analyst - what's it like?

I currently work in the ssg group of a relatively unknown firm. 6 years of experience, CFA.

I really like what we do here, but the hours are catching up to me and I am looking for a new career path. I live in a city where there are very few finance opportunities, but I do occasionally see portfolio management positions, including fund of funds and things like associate pm of passive etf strategies.

With the CFA, it seems these type of roles could be a potential fit. I have a phone interview coming up with a $70b aum firm, for an investment analyst focusing on manager due diligence and selection, and the selection of asset management firms and their products.

What would this job be like? What does comp look like? My current job pays well, and I am not sure I can do all in comp of 90k or something, unless the more senior positions make significantly more.

Anyone with experience in this realm would be great. Thanks.

 
Best Response

I haven't worked on the FoF side, but I imagine the types of things you would be doing would be similar to an investment consultant:

  • compiling statistics on managers' performance
  • meeting with managers to getting to know their philosophy, team, process, etc.
  • writing reports with manager recommendations based upon the above
  • keeping track of managers over time and any changes in their team, performance, etc.

In terms of compensation, my impression is it pays decently (mid 100k) at your experience level and tends to level off around 300-400k, which of course isn't bad at all. You should look towards the comp at large investment consultants such as Callan, Cambridge, and Wilshire.

What I've heard from people in this type of role is that it tends to become mundane after awhile and some of them don't like that the comp levels off so early. However, the lifestyle is great (9-5) and it's a low stress job. I think the more senior you get the harder it would be to flip to a direct investing role, although I've seen consultants and FoF people move into sales / relationship management roles at investment managers.

 

some of the FoF that have invested or thought about investing in my RE PE fund have made some fairly serious models to evaluate our fund. They'll look at some of our past project/deal level models, then make fund level models based on a randomized set of projects, etc... they like to analyze what combination of management/acquisition fees and carry works best for them and under what scenarios, etc

The more common thing, however, is for the to just look at our models and fund level models and make a few adjustments (to make our numbers more conservative, to try and convince us to cut fees, etc), and also just to "validate" that our models are not flawed

 

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