Hong Kong intermediaries show preference for global managers

No regional managers in the top 20 of the Brand Equity Index, research by Fundamental Media finds

Key points:

• Asian managers did not perform well in the unprompted brand recall of most asset classes and management styles, which were dominated by global managers
• Financial intermediaries in Hong Kong are most likely to buy funds from an asset manager who they can easily recall
• When asking intermediaries about their familiarity with different asset managers, 86% of them were aware of at least 30 of the 38 prompted brands

Financial intermediaries in Hong Kong show a preference for global managers, as no regional managers appeared in the top 20 of Fundamental Media’s Brand Equity Index.

Asian managers did not perform well in the unprompted brand recall of most asset classes and management styles, which were dominated by global managers. Asian managers were only mentioned in Japanese equities, real estate, absolute return and ETFs, with each of these having only one regional manager in the top five of most-recalled managers.

From October 2022 to March 2023, we surveyed 31 financial investment professionals in Hong Kong to measure their perception of asset management brands and to identify key drivers of their purchase intentions.

Intermediaries in Hong Kong are most likely to buy funds from an asset manager who they can easily recall, as brand recall was the factor most correlated to propensity to buy, followed by familiarity.

When asking intermediaries about their familiarity with different asset management brands, 86% of them were aware of at least 30 of the 38 prompted brands, while 33% were aware of all prompted brands.

Intermediaries were asked to mention up to three asset managers whose funds they are likely to increase the use of over the next 12 months, which was used to calculate each manager’s score for propensity to buy. We also asked intermediaries what values they attribute to those managers and what makes them want to buy these funds. This revealed that the brands with the highest propensity to buy scores had the most positive comments on ‘product/know-how’ and ‘brand’. Comments related to ‘performance’ and ‘communication’ were also positively correlated with propensity to buy but the strength of the correlation was very weak.

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