Financial Institutions: Asset Manager Global Rating Methodology

Executive Summary

This report describes KBRA’s rating methodology for traditional and alternative asset managers. The asset management sector is broad, with varied investment mandates and strategies. As such, this methodology is meant to be flexible enough to cover investment management firms whose area of expertise span those varied strategies. As a general definition, asset management firms typically provide investment services to third-party clients such as retail and institutional investors and realize revenues from management and, in certain cases, performance fees for those services.

Traditional asset managers generally focus on well-known investment types housed within traditional structures. Well-known investment types include bonds, cash, and other money market instruments, equities, preferred stock, and real estate. Investment structures generally include registered funds, such as open-end and closed-end mutual funds, money market funds, separately managed accounts (SMAs),…