Asset managers, whether boutique or global, face the same problem: limited resources to keep up with every database.
Smaller firms with one or two standout products often employ limited resources of sales and marketing. Thus, committing resource to upload their data to all available databases results in a compromise, whereby only a few databases, or none(!), will be selected.
On the other hand, larger firms, despite having more staff, often focus only on flagship strategies due to the overwhelming volume of products. This selective uploading leaves many managers (and strategies) completely invisible.
M&A activity has only further amplified this issue. As firms grow through acquisition, fewer of their capabilities are accessible via databases.
"Not all boutiques upload to (all) databases, and not all power houses upload all strategies."
As a consequence, selection teams who are relying solely on databases are missing their relevant managers... and possibly their next top performer.
The most common issue is the misalignment of database categories with asset owner mandates. Modern portfolios are sophisticated, and investor mandates increasingly demand precision, not broad-brush solutions. Mandates are now highly customised to ensure that the investments align exactly with their targeted risk, return, and impact objectives.
Yet databases continue to categorise products in overly general buckets like “Global Equities” or “Fixed Income”. These catch-all segments mix fundamentally different strategies, from smart beta to thematic to unconstrained. Whilst category segmentation has improved, many asset owners today still screen on product names. This makes it nearly impossible to identify the best match for a specific mandate.
Meanwhile, new or niche strategies, such as infrastructure debt or impact investing and so on, often don’t fit into any category at all. Some products, like internal incubations or semi-closed hedge funds, may be available to the right strategic investor but are never listed in public databases. Therefore, categories are too blunt a tool for the current highly specific selection criteria.
"Categories are broad catch-all segments which are not sub-divided by process or risk exposures."
While performance data is essential, it can be deceptively narrow... especially when viewed in isolation context.
Start with composites. These are collections of similarly benchmarked client portfolios, but the underlying mandates often differ significantly. In low-volatility areas such as fixed income, this dispersion can significantly skew results by pushing a manager’s composite into a different performance quartile altogether. Moreover, database users often overlook important contextual flags, such as restatements or manager changes, that can alter how the data should be interpreted.
Strong performance also doesn’t reveal why a manager succeeds, or whether that success is repeatable. Without insights into investment philosophy, portfolio construction, or risk management practices, you're left making decisions on half of the picture. Performance is only the output. To truly assess a manager, the inputs are most essential to scrutinise and understand.
When databases can't deliver the full picture, the burden shifts to investment manager selection teams... and the cost is steep.
To complete a robust due diligence process, manager selectors often rely on manual outreach, email requests, document chases, and one-off calls just to get the qualitative data that databases don’t provide. This method doesn’t scale, especially in screening a large pool of managers or expanding coverage into new asset classes.
Then there’s the financial cost. To cover all segments, from traditional long-only strategies to alternatives like hedge funds, PE, or infrastructure, teams often subscribe to multiple databases. Annual fees can range from USD 10k to over 250k, per platform, per team. For many asset owners, especially those conducting fewer searches per year, the return on investment can be hard to justify.
Databases don't come cheap, and are not always justifiable for an occasional search.
The traditional tools (databases, search engines, spreadsheets, and inboxes) hasn’t evolved in decades. But fiduciary pressure has. Asset owners now face stricter governance standards, greater transparency requirements, and more intense performance scrutiny. Sourcing smarter is now a must when the pressure to find the best managers globally and justify their decisions is at an all time high.
As we have discussed about the limitations of investment manager databases, better alternatives are now central to the conversation. That’s where RFPnetworks comes in. Our platform addresses the gaps in conventional databases by allowing selectors to source wider, go deeper, and move faster. You get access to a broader universe of managers, including those underrepresented in traditional channels, and you can evaluate both quantitative and qualitative criteria in one place. It’s a modern tool for a modern due diligence process, helping you find the right manager, for the right mandate, with more confidence.
"It's a modern tool for a modern due diligence process"
Traditional manager databases come with major blind spots: missing managers, overlooking investor needs, undermining the full picture, and overloading selection teams. These are the core limitations of investment manager databases that slow down discovery and create inefficiencies. This blog explores these four challenges in depth and introduces a smarter, more targeted way to source the right managers through modern asset manager selection tools.
With contributions from: Abigail Dahlan is a Product Specialist responsible for enhancing the user experience of our manager selection and investment manager clients. Thao Do is a Marketing Specialist responsible for creating new thought leadership to help our users enhance their knowledge of our products.
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