Rising markets wrote your growth story for a decade, and your firm took the credit in public while the tide did the work. The tide is now a weaker author. This guide tests agencies against the current industry record, and the defining number is uncomfortable: global assets under management reached $147 trillion in 2025, yet more than 80 percent of revenue growth came from market performance rather than new investor money (Boston Consulting Group, 2026). When markets stop writing the story, firms must. Most are not staffed for that.
I Discrimen
Performance explains your past; only positioning explains your next mandate
A consultant can model your returns in an afternoon and still not know why you exist.
Institutional consultants and platform gatekeepers see your numbers through standard systems. What they cannot extract from a database is your reason to exist: the client problem you solve better than the forty similar products on the same shelf. That reason is a communications product, and it is either built deliberately or left blank.
Ask agency candidates to write your reason in fifty words, using only public material, before any strategy meeting. Compare the attempts. The gap between the best and worst version is the gap between a firm that can be recommended and a firm that can only be screened.
Private market colleagues face a parallel problem with longer lockups, as our guide to choosing a PR agency for hedge funds shows for managers whose results are reported quarterly and judged slowly. Numbers travel. Meaning has to be carried.
II Machina
Distribution now runs on searchable expertise, not on wholesaler mileage
The first shortlist is assembled by people who have read you, not met you.
Gatekeepers research before they invite. They read manager commentary, conference remarks and press coverage, and increasingly they ask AI tools to summarise who leads thinking in a category. A firm with no published thinking is summarised as nothing, politely and permanently.
That mechanism changes what PR is for. The task is a steady output of attributable expertise: market views with a named author, product education that intermediaries can reuse, and data your own investment teams produce, placed where consultants and advisers actually look.
Deloitte's 2026 investment management outlook stresses that differentiation now depends on professionals who can explain complex products and new technology to clients, not only on those who can run portfolios (Deloitte, reported by Financial Advisor Magazine, 2026). Explanation is a distribution skill. Hire an agency that treats it as one.
III Exemplum
The largest managers show how concentration rewards a clear public identity
Scale captures flows partly because scale is easy to describe in a committee room.
The 500 largest managers held $139.9 trillion at the end of 2024, up 9.4 percent in a year, with North American managers accounting for $88.2 trillion, or 63 percent, of that total (Thinking Ahead Institute, 2025). Passive strategies reached 39 percent of those assets, climbing while active share slipped. The industry's centre of gravity is moving toward firms that are simple to categorise.
You cannot outgrow that arithmetic quickly, but you can out specify it. A mid sized manager with a sharply defined category, a named investment personality and a consistent public argument is easier to recommend than a larger rival described in generalities. Coverage that repeats the specification, quarter after quarter, is how the description hardens into reputation.
The earlier BCG count makes the same point from the revenue side: global assets reached $128 trillion in 2024, and over 70 percent of the industry's $58 billion revenue growth that year came from market performance (Boston Consulting Group, 2025). Growth gifted by markets needs no story. Growth taken from rivals does.
| Measure | Figure | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Global assets under management | $147 trillion | 2025 |
| Assets of the 500 largest managers | $139.9 trillion | End of 2024 |
| North American share of top 500 assets | 63 percent, $88.2 trillion | End of 2024 |
| Year on year growth, top 500 assets | 9.4 percent | 2024 |
fons: Boston Consulting Group, 2026, and Thinking Ahead Institute, 2025, as reported by Financial Standard, 2025.
IV Damnum
Fee pressure becomes a public argument long before it becomes a pricing decision
A product described only by its performance will be bought only on its price.
When coverage says nothing distinctive about your firm, intermediaries default to the two comparisons always available: last year's return and this year's fee. Both are contests you will sometimes lose through no fault of your process. A public record of judgement gives buyers a third comparison, and it is the only one you control.
The structural pressure is real. BCG found that industry profit margins have held near 30 percent while costs rose faster than revenues, squeezing firms that cannot win net new flows (Boston Consulting Group, 2026). Flows follow confidence, and confidence is partly manufactured in public by firms that publish well.
Ask candidates a hard question in the pitch: what would you stop us saying? Agencies that answer with examples of claims they refused to push for other clients understand the economics. Agencies that promise to say anything are selling you a liability with a retainer attached.
Buyout colleagues learned the same lesson through a harsher cycle, when fundraising slowed and every public claim was checked against distributions, as our guide to PR agency choice for private equity firms records. Public market managers get checked faster, not gentler. Your claims are compared against live prices and published performance every single day, which leaves even less room for decorative language.
V Genus
Institutional, intermediary and retail audiences need three different firms on paper
One message bent for three audiences usually breaks in the hands of all three.
Your institutional story is about process durability and team depth. Your intermediary story is about client conversations: material an adviser can hand to a nervous investor in a bad month. Your retail story, where it exists, is about trust at kitchen table scale. Each requires its own writers, evidence and cadence.
Wealth businesses live closest to the third audience, and our guide to PR agency selection for wealth management companies details how adviser facing communication differs from institutional work. Read the two guides together if your firm serves both channels, because the seams between them are where mixed agencies usually tear.
Require candidates to present the three audience plans separately, with separate sample material. A single plan with three logos pasted on it is a confession. Specialisation is visible in the writing samples before it is visible anywhere else.
VI Regio
Category leadership is won market by market, not in a global press release
Consultants in each region keep their own mental league table, and entry is local.
Asset management looks global from the assets side and stubbornly local from the distribution side. Consultant teams, platforms and financial press differ by country, and a manager's standing in one market buys little in another. Schroders and Amundi both maintain substantial research publishing operations aimed at regional professional audiences, which tells you where the argument is actually held (Schroders, 2026; Amundi Research Center, 2026).
So test agencies regionally. For each of your priority markets, ask for the last three placements aimed at consultants or intermediaries there, and the names of the journalists who took them. The full range of services behind a regional plan appears on our public relations services page, from media relations to executive visibility.
A global network logo is not a regional plan. Named people, in named markets, with named placements: that is the whole test, and it takes ten minutes to run.
VII Occasio
Product change is the news cycle asset managers actually own
Launches, conversions and new vehicles are the rare moments when the trade press needs you.
Your industry generates few natural headlines, but product change is one of them. Active exchange traded funds, hybrid public and private vehicles, and retirement products are restructuring shelves, and journalists need managers who can explain the change without selling through it. Agencies should be building your spokespeople for exactly those moments.
The opportunity is sizeable. Deloitte projects that private market allocations inside United States defined contribution plans could pass $1 trillion by 2030, reaching about 6 percent of plan assets (Deloitte, 2026). Firms that become the quoted explainers of that shift will be associated with it when consultants build the new shelves.
Real estate colleagues are working the same product change from another angle, as our guide to PR agency choice for real estate investment trusts shows for listed vehicles explaining private market exposure. New structures need translators. Become one before your competitors do.
| Shift | Evidence | Communications task |
|---|---|---|
| Market driven growth | Over 80 percent of 2025 revenue growth from performance | Build a flows story that survives flat markets |
| Passive expansion | 39 percent of top 500 assets | State the active case in specific, testable terms |
| Retail led expansion | 61 percent of asset growth from 2020 to 2025 | Publish thinking retail gatekeepers can reuse |
| Retirement reform | Private assets in pension plans could pass $1 trillion by 2030 | Become a quoted explainer early |
fons: Boston Consulting Group, 2026, Thinking Ahead Institute, 2025, and Deloitte, 2026.
VIII Structura
Compliance safe process is a creative asset when it is designed early
The fastest approval chain in the building wins more coverage than the boldest pitch.
Asset management communication runs through compliance, and agencies fail here quietly: good material dies in review queues, market comments arrive after the news has moved, and spokespeople decline interviews they could have taken. None of that is a creativity problem. All of it is process design.
Ask candidates how they build an approval workflow: standing clearances for recurring commentary, pre approved data packs, named compliance contacts, and turnaround targets measured in hours. Accenture's asset management practice writes regularly about operating model redesign in this industry, and the same logic applies to your communications supply chain (Accenture, 2026).
Then look at measurement structure. Reporting should follow the audience split from section V, with consultant facing, intermediary facing and direct coverage judged separately. Our guide to choosing a PR agency for financial advisory firms shows how adviser businesses audit the same reporting habit from the buyer's chair. Design the workflow once. Benefit from it every quarter.
IX Consilium
Judge finalists on a live brief drawn from your hardest current problem
Credentials describe the agency's past clients; a live brief describes your future.
Give each finalist the same assignment: a plan to defend an underperforming flagship fund's franchise without disputing the numbers, plus a launch plan for one product entering a new channel. Score specificity, compliance awareness and honesty about what coverage cannot do.
| Criterion | Strong evidence | Weak evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Category definition | Your reason to exist, written in fifty words | A list of products and founding dates |
| Audience separation | Distinct plans for consultants, advisers and clients | One plan relabelled three times |
| Compliance fluency | Approval workflow with turnaround targets | Surprise that review exists |
| Regional proof | Named placements in each priority market | Network logos and office counts |
| Candour | Claims the agency would refuse to make | Promises of coverage volume |
fons: Criteria set against Boston Consulting Group, 2026, and Thinking Ahead Institute, 2025.
End the process by interviewing the people who will actually write for you, and ask each one to critique a piece of your current public material. Writers who can improve a paragraph in the room will improve your record outside it. That is the skill you are purchasing, in its smallest visible unit.
X Quaesita
Questions
How is PR for an asset manager different from PR for a bank or insurer?
Your buyers are consultants, platforms and advisers rather than depositors or policyholders, and they compare you against dozens of near substitutes. The work therefore centres on category definition and attributable investment thinking. Coverage that would flatter a bank, general business prestige, does little for a manager being screened for a specific mandate.
Can PR influence consultant ratings or platform decisions?
It cannot substitute for due diligence, and you should distrust anyone who claims otherwise. It can ensure that the people conducting diligence encounter a clear, current and consistent account of your process before and between formal reviews. Many mandates are lost on fuzziness rather than on numbers, and fuzziness is fixable.
What should our investment staff publish, and how often?
Publish a small number of substantial pieces on a reliable cadence rather than a stream of market noise. A quarterly outlook with a named author, data from your own process and a view that can be checked later is worth more than weekly commentary. EY's wealth and asset management research makes the same point about expertise as a client facing asset (EY, 2026).
How do we handle coverage of an underperforming fund?
Address it in the terms you set before performance dipped: process, positioning and the conditions the strategy needs. Never attack the data, and never hide the spokesperson. Consultants keep records of which managers explained a bad year and which went quiet, and those records outlive the performance itself.
Should one agency cover every region we sell into?
Only if it can name senior people and recent placements in each priority market. Otherwise, a lead agency coordinating strong local partners usually serves you better than a single network contract. Whichever model you choose, keep one reporting standard and one message architecture across all markets.
What metrics belong in our quarterly PR report?
Report by audience: consultant facing coverage, intermediary material produced and reused, direct client reach, and the specific claims each piece carried. Add share of voice within your defined category, not across the whole industry. Volume counts and advertising equivalents tell the board almost nothing it can act on.
How long a contract should we sign?
Sign for an initial year with a break clause after two quarters, tied to the reporting standards agreed at the start. Product launches and consultant review cycles run on annual rhythms, so shorter trials can mislead. Judge the first two quarters on process quality, accuracy and the clarity of your category story in market.
How this guide was built
This guide is built from the Boston Consulting Group Global Asset Management reports for 2025 and 2026, the Thinking Ahead Institute ranking of the world's largest managers, Deloitte's investment management outlook and financial services predictions, and published material from EY, Schroders, Amundi, Natixis Investment Managers, Accenture, Broadridge and Cerulli. Its stated limitation is aggregation: global asset totals and top 500 rankings describe the industry's centre of gravity, while your selection decision turns on category and region, which is why the criteria in section IX are tested through live briefs rather than league tables.
Sources
- Boston Consulting Group, Global Asset Management Report, on 2025 assets, growth sources and industry economics, 2026, as reported by WealthBriefing. https://www.wealthbriefing.com/html/article.php/global-asset-managers-can%27t-rely-on-rising-markets-as-much-for-growth--bcg
- Boston Consulting Group, Global Asset Management Report, on 2024 assets reaching 128 trillion dollars, 2025, as reported by The Hindu BusinessLine. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/markets/global-asset-management-aum-up-12-to-128-trillion-in-cy24-bcg-report/article69505898.ece
- Thinking Ahead Institute, World's Largest Asset Managers study, covering the 500 largest managers to the end of 2024, 2025, as reported by Financial Standard. https://www.financialstandard.com.au/news/largest-managers-assets-climb-9-4-research-179810559?related=179811664
- LiquidityFinder, reporting on the Thinking Ahead Institute ranking and its record asset total, 2025. https://liquidityfinder.com/news/worlds-largest-asset-managers-hit-record-usd-1399-trillion-in-assets-35e62
- Deloitte, financial services predictions covering investment and wealth management to 2030, 2026. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/about/press-room/deloitte-predicts-financial-services-reshaped-by-2030.html
- Financial Advisor Magazine, reporting on the Deloitte 2026 Investment Management Outlook, 2026. https://www.fa-mag.com/news/advisors-need-enhanced-skills-for-2026-and-beyond--deloitte-says-84789.html
- EY, wealth and asset management insight and research, 2026. https://www.ey.com/en_us/wealth-asset-management
- Schroders, investment insight publishing for professional investors, 2026. https://www.schroders.com/en/insights/
- Accenture, asset management industry practice and research, 2026. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/industries/capital-markets/asset-management
- Amundi Research Center, macroeconomic and investment research publishing, 2026. https://research-center.amundi.com/
XI Incipe
A manager that publishes its thinking can be recommended between performance reviews
Consultants will summarise your firm this quarter, in writing, whether you supply the material or not. Aerovector helps asset management clients rank for AI search results and guarantees media coverage, which in turn generates leads from consultants, advisers and direct investors researching your category. The engagement builds a Message House around your reason to exist, schedules attributable investment thinking through a Newsroom Calendar, and reports results by audience in Coverage Reporting, so distribution leaders can see which public claims are moving.
Aerovector gives asset managers a public argument as disciplined as their investment process.
Send us your category and priority markets through the Aerovector contact page
Additional Details
Description: How to Choose a PR agency for Asset management firms: the evidence to demand, the trade offs to weigh, and the questions that separate a sound hire from an.
Published: 2026-10-25