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Last year on Thursday 3 December, BlueChip hosted its first in-person event since the pandemic began, bringing together various clients and industry participants including superannuation funds, asset management firms and industry associations.
Tim Samway, Chairman of Australia’s top-performing fund manager, Hyperion Asset Management, kicked off his discussion on the importance of trust within financial services and likened funds management to magic.
“I'll tell you why [funds management] it’s a bit like magic. For most people in the community, magic can be quite hard. In theory, sawing your kid sister in half and putting her back together, looks easy, but that's in theory.
“I think it's the same for funds management. It requires a client watching the funds management show, to in a way, hand over their kid sister to be sawed in half, and have that kid sister come back whole, perhaps with a couple of inches added. “And in that way, it's all about trust.”
Tim Samway, Chairman, Hyperion Asset Management
Asset management and the financial services industry more broadly, is an industry built-upon and entirely reliant on trust.
As Tim pointed out, the closer you are to somebody and the more you can see and use that person’s physical signals, the more you can build trust with that person.
And when it comes to institutional funds management, trust is a major component of winning big mandates and this process of building trust, according to Tim, can take years.
What has worked particularly well for Hyperion, during the no-travel, no-meeting shutdown of 2020 has been their increased use of investor webinars which have greatly assisted in accelerating the delivery of information to current and prospective investors, and advisors.
In Tim’s own words, “Webinars are fantastic. We find that whenever we’ve run a webinar, people do want to watch it”.
Importance of storytelling
Another key focus of Tim’s discussion was the impact of successful storytelling. He stressed the importance of being able to ‘speak the same language’ as the target audience and that by considering things from that audiences’ perspective, trust could be more easily built.
As communication consultants, BlueChip has worked closely with Hyperion for many years to build-out and evolve its brand narrative and key messaging, ensuring that it resonates well with the intended audiences.
Incorporating this messaging across all integrated marketing, public relations and distribution efforts, has helped play a key role in maintaining lead generation, business momentum and FuM flows in the absence of face-to-face meetings and investor roadshows.
Good performance only half the story
2020 was a stellar year for all three of Hyperion’s funds, but Tim stated that “great performance is only half the story – distribution is the second half”.
So while trust, and of course good performance, are essential ingredients for growing FuM, so too is staying top-of-mind, especially as competition increases within the funds management industry.
Tim says, “There are virtually no barriers to entry [to funds management], but the barriers to success are massive.”
This increased competition comes as institutional investors continue to squeeze fees from poor performers however, Tim said that Hyperion was never question on fees and that institutional clients were more focused on a total outcome, rather than fees.
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If you’d like to discuss adjusting your communications strategy for the current times, please call us or fill out our contact form here.
