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Blog · Coverage and territory · Asset managers

Consultant coverage: the gatekeepers of institutional flows, and whether anyone has called them

How an asset manager's institutional team measures its coverage of investment consultants from the consultant master, the ratings file and the contact log: consultants ranked by the assets they advise in the manager's strategies' classes, the manager's rating status at each, contact recency against a stated cadence, the consultants who advise the most and rate the manager least, and the mandates won and lost by consultant that say which relationships convert.

The short answerInvestment consultants gate most institutional mandates, and a manager's consultant coverage is measured on three things per consultant: the assets the consultant advises in the manager's asset classes, the manager's rating status at that consultant per strategy, and contact recency against a stated cadence. Consultants advising the most where the manager is unrated or stale-rated, with no contact in the cadence, are the list. Mandates won and lost by advising consultant, from the manager's own history, say which consultant relationships actually convert and rank the effort.

An institutional sales team knows the consultants by name and by lunch. It does not have, in one table, which consultants advise the most assets in its classes, where the manager is rated and how recently, when anyone last spoke to each, and which relationships have actually produced mandates. The consultant master, the ratings file and the contact log produce it. This guide sets out consultant coverage and the list.

The measures

Per consultant:

Advised assets in the manager's classes, from survey or estimate Rating status per strategy: buy, hold, not rated, under review, stale, with date Contact recency = days since last logged contact, against a cadence by consultant tier Mandates seen, won and lost with this consultant advising, trailing three years

Per consultant relations officer: the consultants covered, and the same measures rolled up.

The rows you need

  • Consultant master: consultant, tier, advised assets by class, officer.
  • Ratings file: consultant, strategy, rating, date.
  • Contact log: consultant, date, type.
  • Mandate history: mandate, advising consultant, outcome, date.

Consultant and strategy identifiers only.

The assertion

every mandate in the history has an advising consultant, or is marked direct

Direct mandates are real and separate. A mandate with a consultant not in the master fails and is listed.

A worked list

Consultant Advised assets, class Rating, flagship strategy Rating date Days since contact Cadence Mandates seen / won List
CN-01 $180bn Buy 8 months 20 45 14 / 6 Fine
CN-04 $140bn Not rated 210 45 3 / 0 Gap: largest unrated, unvisited
CN-07 $60bn Buy 30 months 15 60 9 / 1 Stale rating; low conversion
CN-11 $25bn Hold 6 months 8 90 2 / 1 Fine for tier

Consultant CN-04 advises a hundred and forty billion in the manager's classes, has never rated the strategy, and nobody has spoken to them in seven months. That is row one. Consultant CN-07 has a buy rating that is two and a half years old and has produced one mandate in nine; the rating needs refreshing and the relationship needs a look.

Conversion by consultant

Consultant Mandates seen Won Win rate Reading
CN-01 14 6 43% The relationship produces
CN-07 9 1 11% Rated, not recommended in practice

A buy rating that does not convert is a rating on paper. The mandate history says so.

Where it goes wrong

Coverage by lunches. Recency in someone's memory, not the log.

Advised assets not ranked. Effort spread evenly across consultants of very different weight.

Ratings undated. A stale buy treated as current.

Conversion not tracked. The rated consultant who never recommends.

Every quarter, per consultant

Mapped once, the consultant master, the ratings file, the contact log and the mandate history produce the coverage measures, the list and the conversion by consultant every quarter. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The asset managers page describes the setup, and the channel share guide covers the intermediated channels on the wealth side.

Questions people ask

Where does advised assets come from?

Industry surveys of consultant-advised assets by asset class, or the manager's own estimate from the mandates it has seen the consultant on. Either is a ranking input, labelled, and the ranking is stable even when the level is approximate.

What is rating status?

The consultant's research rating of the manager's strategy: buy, hold, not rated, or under review, with the date. From the consultant relations team's own file. A rating older than a stated age is stale, and stale is its own state on the report.

How is conversion measured?

From the manager's mandate history: for each won or lost mandate, the advising consultant. Win rate by consultant, over enough mandates to mean something, says which relationships produce, and a consultant with many mandates seen and few won is a rating or a relationship problem.