What's the difference (if any) between a Bank AM and a 'normal' AM?

Addinator

You've seen in recent years, and months at this rate, quite a few banks looking at exploring selling their AM arm and/or divesting portions of their businesses for a variety of reasons - some due to the challenges of fee pressures, some due to fee waivers if they are more liquidity focused, some due to increasing capex on non-revenue generating areas (compliance, technology, etc.) along with the non-core nature (low single digit revenue slugs of banks, at best in a lot of cases). That's a long way of saying what Rickle did - you aren't their focus, just another part of the machine. 

Which speaks to the culture at many of these places - it's far more corporate. It has to be. Hierarchies exist, roles are more defined, compensation more streamlined (for better or worse, depending on the place) and you have to contend with a lot more regulatory pressure, even more so than you would at a stand alone AM given it's a bank. That's not to say it's a bad culture - it's just going to be different. 

From a practical standpoint - a lot of them are more setup as a one stop shop, aligned to create products/services to distribute across their own or other platforms/channels (i.e. through wealth management, RIA's, etc.) and in some cases, basically setup to serve the clients of the bank already. Look at MS buying Eaton Vance - that was effectively to vertically integrate the services they already provide, EV distribute quite a few of their tax exempt stuff through MS anyway, plus some ESG and a customized SMA business to help fight off fee pressure among other things. I think that was a smart decision - but it's not like the AM arm decided to bulk up their distribution, the bank decided to bring it in house...  I'm over generalizing, but you get my drift here. It also gives some balance - in the best case - where the bank can carry you or provide a lot of cross selling opportunities, and vice versa, when times get tough. 

To Rickle's point about movement - I had always been advised to start at the big bank AM's, get the exposure/experience/network/resume and then move to an independent firm or smaller shop. You can, in theory, bring more value with you - whether it's processes, clients/networking, investment experience, etct. I didn't do that route, but it's pretty common and I saw a lot of that as I work for a non-bank AM. 

Last thing on the Independent AM side - there's so much more variety in firm size, type, culture, and overall focus. You have small, niche firms that do nothing but insurance management. You might have a dodge and cox who focuses on a few things, and does them extremely well - a 'pure' manager if you will. You have others like Wellington which is just absolutely massive, and does everything under the sun and then some. Then you have the behemoths - Vanguard, Blackrock - they might as well be marketing companies that happen to manage some money. The list goes on and on, but you get my point - larger you go, in general, more you look like the banks. The smaller side often has different career paths or opportunities - maybe a partnership with lots of upside, maybe a ton of role flexibility or less defined roles giving you broader leeway into what you do. 

Anyway - I'm done rambling. There's other threads on here, I think similar in content at this point. 

Does a ‘pure’ manager with a stellar long term track record offer a compensation premium relative to the Wellingtons and Bank AMs, particularly for junior investment roles?