HFA increases institutional impact

HFA Asset Management’s conscious effort to become more proactive with institutional investors has begun to pay dividends with the winning of a $60 million international shares portfolio mandate from Vision Super.

The addition of Vision Super’s mandate has allowed HFA’s assets under management to surpass $1.25 billion.

The new business win comes after continued contact with the super fund’s asset consultants who have been tracking the boutique fund manager’s progress over the past three years.

The mandate will be serviced by HFA’s International Shares Fund, which is a fund of funds specialising in offshore long/short equity strategies.

While HFA has been more prominent in the retail space its chief executive Spencer Young believes the awarding of institutional mandates to specialist managers may become more commonplace.

“I believe the good managers in this space know far in excess of what anybody else does about the space. We spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week on it, whereas the asset consultants need to cover several asset classes and several strategies and styles,” he said.

“With fund of funds what’s really happening is the asset consultants are saying, ‘We’ve looked at the fund of fund managers and their processes and procedures, and these guys clearly know more about investing in our underlying individual managers than what an asset consultant would be able to do’. Therefore, I think you’ll see a lot more use of the specialists in the fund of funds world,” Young added.

Young also believes HFA’s inroads into the institutional arena will continue.

“We’re expecting over the next three to six months a number of mandates because a couple of asset consultants have given us the big tick. Therefore, it’s simply now a process of them putting us in front of their clients and make recommendations,” he said.