Driven by our ongoing commitment to understanding the alternative investment industry, Seward & Kissel conducts various studies throughout the year of the important trends that impact the industry and our clients. As such, we surveyed alternative investment managers to gain a better understanding of how COVID-19 has impacted their businesses. Based on the number and variety of participants, we believe that the Survey results provide informative benchmarking data that will be useful as the industry emerges from the pandemic.

Key Findings:

• A majority of alternative investment managers (54%) expect to fully return to their offices by the end of the calendar year
• Nearly a third of participants (28%) in NYC believe their firms will reduce the size of their office space
• 72% of participants believe their firms are going to change their work-from-home policies
• A substantial majority (69%) believe their firms are going to change their office layout
• Among all participants, 40% believe their firm is likely to consider hiring remote operations/accounting/IT personnel and 34% believe their firm is likely to consider hiring remote investment professionals
• Less than 10% of participants granted investor-friendly concessions on fee, liquidity, or reporting terms during the pandemic
• To conduct investor due diligence, respondents during the pandemic have relied more heavily on conference calls, video conferencing, and screen sharing; respondents increased their use of those tools by 63%, 60%, and 34%, respectively
• Firms with $5B+ in AUM experienced an increase in investor demand for both new and existing strategies at a higher rate than firms with less than $5B in AUM

To download a copy of the Survey, please complete and submit the form below.