APFI was mentioned in the Ignites article Fund selectors draft manager questionnaire.
A group of European fund selectors are working on a standardised due diligence questionnaire aimed at facilitating the manager selection process. The Association of Professional Fund Investors, a trade body representing fund selectors across Europe, is drafting the industry-standard template with the aim of publishing a white paper on the topic in the near future.
The project comes in response to calls from fund selectors for greater uniformity with regard to the initial information supplied to them by fund managers at the beginning of the selection process.
Mussie Kidane, the top fund selector at Swiss bank Pictet and one of the four founding members of the APFI, says that when fund selectors become interested in a fund, they send a request to the manager for some basic information.
“The [APFI’s] idea is to have a sort of industry standard [in terms of] the information that is disclosed, instead of having to ask all sorts of questions [to different fund managers].”
Jon Beckett, UK research lead at the APFI, adds that a standardised due diligence document exists in other sectors, such as the hedge fund and private equity industries.