[ S U R V E Y
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H E D G E
F U N D
A D M I N I S T R AT I O N]
A wide angle view of services
The 2018 Hedge Fund Administration Survey has been expanded to cover new client
demands and allow for a more granular assessment of service received.
T
he 2018 Hedge Fund Administration
(HFA) Survey is a continuation in a
series of surveys produced jointly by AON
McLagan Investment Services (McLagan)
and Global Custodian (GC), following sig-
nature of their agreement to co-operate
in the management of client experience
surveys in the securities services industry
from March 2018. A Survey FAQ, pub-
lished in this edition and online, explains
how the relationship works and who to
contact in the event of specific queries.
As in 2017, the HFA Survey, which was
open for submissions between May and
July 2018, asked clients to assess the
services that they receive from their fund
administrators. Comparison between
years was limited, as this year’s question-
naire was extensively updated to reflect
changes in both client priorities and
services provided. Last year’s question-
naire included 30 questions across nine
service areas. This year’s was expanded to
54 questions across 19 service areas (See
Methodology). Respondents were, howev-
er, offered the option of giving an overall
assessment of a service area.
Clients were asked to rate services
by stating how much they agreed or
disagreed with a statement regarding
a service based on a scale of 20 points.
For publication, however, results were
converted to the seven-point scale (where
1=unacceptable and 7=excellent) familiar
to Global Custodian readers.
In the provider write-ups that follow,
respondent profiles by size and loca-
tion are published along with category
scores and their variation from the global
average. Table 1 provides aggregate scores
by category as well as by the respondent
segments covered in the provider profiles.
This may add further colour to the indi-
vidual provider profiles. Larger clients,
for example, tend to be less generous in
their scoring than their smaller peers.
As a result, providers with a relatively
56
Global Custodian
TABLE 1 : AGGREGATE SCORES BY RESPONDENT PROFILE
Firm Size
Location
Global
Weighted
Average
Scores Large Medium Small Americas EMEA APAC
Total 5.99 5.78 5.74 6.14 6.13 5.70 6.00
Client service 6.02 5.62 5.68 6.25 6.20 5.50 6.14
On-boarding 5.71 5.41 5.34 5.96 5.87 5.32 5.82
Fund accounting 6.21 6.14 6.04 6.28 6.30 6.02 6.18
Investor services 6.06 5.95 5.84 6.16 6.23 5.73 6.02
Reporting to investors 6.02 5.71 5.77 6.18 6.16 5.74 5.97
Reporting to managers 5.86 5.60 5.50 6.07 6.04 5.44 5.97
Reporting to regulators 6.02 5.60 5.75 6.19 6.01 5.94 6.13
Reporting to the tax
authorities 5.98 6.07 5.48 6.14 5.92 5.83 6.15
Reporting to auditors 6.09 5.89 5.88 6.21 6.27 5.74 6.03
KYC, AML and sanctions
screening 6.03 5.73 5.92 6.15 6.26 5.84 5.84
Depositary services 5.99 5.90 5.45 6.24 6.34 5.52 6.04
Corporate secretarial
services 5.86 4.91 5.79 5.96 6.15 5.78 5.63
Middle office services 5.86 5.24 5.66 6.06 5.90 5.66 6.07
Banking services 6.07 6.06 5.84 6.17 6.22 5.92 5.99
Operations 6.12 5.96 5.81 6.29 6.32 5.89 6.01
Capital introductions* 4.63 N/A 4.14 5.41 4.63 N/A N/A
Cyber-security 5.99 5.94 5.87 6.07 6.09 5.69 6.16
Price 5.82 5.51 5.87 5.87 5.94 5.65 5.76
* A small minority of HFAs offer this service. While responses were received from several
participants, these were insufficient to award individual provider scores for this category.
large cohort of large respondents in their
survey sample may find this reflected in
some of their category scores.
Aggregate category scores in this year’s
survey, with the exception of Capital
Introductions, fall in a relatively narrow
The Hedge Fund Annual 2018
range (5.71-6.12), suggesting general satis-
faction with service consistency. Where,
in individual cases, spreads are larger, this
is often the result of one or two ‘outliers’.
See page 69 for Methodology