McLagan is focused on providing compensation consulting services and pay and performance data to asset management firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, banks, plan sponsors, endowments and foundations, public funds, asset consultants, and family offices.
Our financial services industry focus, ongoing client work, and proprietary study data allow us to frame each consulting project within a broad business context and apply our keen understanding of competitive issues and best practices. While the scope of our consulting work varies, our expertise includes:
- Providing reward advisory services to senior management and their board of directors.
- Benchmarking competitive pay levels and practices and related human resource issues.
- Designing annual, long-term and sales incentive plans.
The quality of our work is evidenced by our long-standing relationships with our clients and market share. For example, in the US, we work with 14 of the top 15 real estate advisors.
Our asset management practice is global in scope, with staff located in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia.
We provide asset management organizations with three primary types of consulting assistance outlined below:
Benchmarking
- Identifed competitive portfolio manager incentive plan approaches for institutional managers.
- Benchmarked competitive wholesaler pay approaches such as bonus plan payout rates and linkages to net sales for mutual fund companies.
- Defined benefit and perquisite practices for competitive hedge funds.
- Built best practices into the Compensation Committee charters of publicly traded U.Ss asset management firms and leading Canadian plan sponsors.
Incentive Plan Design
- Re-designed the annual incentive plan for portfolio managers, researchers, and traders in a leading advisory firm.
- Developed a plan for broadening equity ownership in a small investment management firm.
- Assisted a mid-sized public pension plan in reviewing the design features of its incentive plan.
- Helped a large, global family office define its pay strategy and review its pay plan.
- Created new wholesaler pay plans for a major mutual fund company.
- Designed new institutional sales and relationship manager pay plans for a large global asset management company.
- Enabled the senior partners of a mid-sized hedge fund to revamp their approach to cash and long-term incentives.
Pay Advisory
- Provided insight about current business and pay practices to the head of distribution at a major asset management firm.
- Helped the CEO of a leading mutual fund company assess cash incentive plan alternatives.
- Delivered year-end pay trend assistance to C-level executives at over 40 leading asset management firms.
- Served as the Board’s compensation consultant for several publicly traded asset management firms.
McLagan’s annual performance benchmarking studies help our clients better understand and reinforce the linkages between firm and/or individual performance and reward. Examples of our performance benchmarking studies focused on asset management firms include:
Performance Intelligence
Provides insights about asset management firm business results,
compensation / incentive payout rates, and staffing levels. Conducted in
partnership with Institutional Investor and Casey Quirk. Over 100 firms participate.
Quarterly Financial Benchmarks
A deep dive into the quarterly financial disclosures of over 20 publicly disclosed asset management firms.
Hedge Fund Business Benchmarking
Covers management fees, cash flows, operating expenses, fund-level expenses, staffing levels and productivity by major function. Approximately 25 leading hedge funds participate annually.
Portfolio Manager Performance and Pay
Through single and multi-regression analysis, this study highlights the linkage between pay and performance which is defined in terms of AUM, revenues, relative investment performance, cash flows, and more.
