Respondent Attributes

Respondents represent a variety of financial Institutions.

Most respondents (79.1%) engage in sales, while 13.7% participate in product selection and planning, and 7.2% perform "other duties".  Their positions include rank and file employee (38.4%), supervisor (21.2%), manager (20.5%), branch head/department head (11.6%), and board member (8.2%).  They range in age from their 20s to 60 and above, but most are in their 30s (30.1%) and 40s (27.7%).

The survey asked financial retailers to rate asset managers by overall performance and performance of certain functions.  Statistics were calculated separately for Japanese firms (26) and foreign firms (22) because the scale of human resources and sales strategies differ, making it difficult to evaluate them on the same basis.

Overall Performance

Performance by Function

Respondents assessed asset manager performance in 1) investment management, 2) product planning and development, 3) quality of sales representatives, 4) support, 5) brand strength, and 6) governance.

Japanese (score)

Foreign based (score)

The survey also asked the retailers to rate the importance of the six functions on a 5-point scale.  Investment management was ranked most important (4.7), followed by support (4.4), product planning and development (4.3), quality of sales representatives (4.3), brand strength (3.9), and governance (3.8).

When relative importance is considered, the overall ranking by functions becomes:

Integrated Evaluation

Lastly, the survey made an integrated ranking of asset managers by adding the overall performance scores and performance by whole function and dividing by 2.