From a consultant shortlist to a mandate
You sell investment strategies, funds or segregated mandates to pension funds, insurers, foundations and family offices, at home and abroad. The investors who can allocate to your asset class number in the hundreds per country, and most of your pipeline sits in introductory meetings that never turned into a place on a shortlist.
Who this page is for
- Asset managers selling strategies and mandates to pension funds and insurers
- Investment boutiques exporting to institutional investors in other countries
- Managers selling to foundations and family offices, often through consultants
Usual starting point: Demand
How do you increase sales for a asset management company?
Be on the consultant's shortlist and known to the CIO before a search opens. Institutional mandates pass a consultant database screen, an RFP, due diligence and a board decision, so keep your data current in consultant databases, map trustees, the CIO and operational due diligence at each named pension fund or insurer, and contact them when a search or allocation review is published.
What do the numbers say about Wealth & Asset Management?
Each figure links to the page it comes from, so you can check it before you repeat it.
| What the evidence says | Source |
|---|---|
| The top five investment consultants advise on 70% of worldwide assets, up from 64% in 2010. | Cerulli Associates (2025) |
| Assets under management in Switzerland reached almost CHF 3.73 trillion at the end of 2025. | Asset Management Association Switzerland (June 2026) |
| Switzerland had 1,292 pension funds in 2024 with a combined balance sheet of CHF 1,220.6 billion. | Swiss Federal Statistical Office (21 January 2026) |
Why does the usual approach stall in Wealth & Asset Management?
An allocation is decided by a board or an investment committee, often on the advice of an investment consultant who draws up the shortlist. Research by Howard Jones and Jose Vicente Martinez found that managers frequently shortlisted by consultants are perceived as more likely to outperform, so a manager the consultant does not know starts behind, whatever its track record. Swiss pension funds add a second layer, because their boards of trustees hold an equal number of employer and employee representatives, and the case has to make sense to trustees who are not investment professionals. The portfolio manager who met the CIO cannot answer for all of these people, so the relationship stops at a friendly meeting.
Volume marketing does not fit a regulated and finite audience. ESMA's guidelines on fund marketing communications, applicable since 2 February 2022, require marketing to be identifiable as such and to present risks and rewards in an equally prominent manner, which rules out most of the shortcuts paid campaigns rely on. Switzerland alone had 1,292 pension funds in 2024 by the Federal Statistical Office's count, and only part of them invest in any one asset class, so the right list is small enough to name account by account.
If you distribute funds to retail investors through banks, advisers and fund platforms, this page describes the wrong problem, because that channel is won through distribution agreements and platform listings rather than through a named list of institutional buyers.
Where does pipeline break in Wealth & Asset Management?
We look at five stages in the Diagnostic, because each fails for a different reason. The rows show the failure we look for first at each stage and what changes once Torke fixes it, in the order a deal meets them.
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Discovery
Where it breaks
A manager the investment consultant does not know starts behind when the shortlist is drawn up, whatever its track record
What changes once it is fixed
Torke's Visibility practice builds the pages consultants and CIOs read before a first meeting, and checks how AI assistants describe the strategy
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Timing
Where it breaks
Pension funds and consultants publish searches with a closing date, and a manager who learns late has days to answer a long questionnaire
What changes once it is fixed
Account signals watch pages, newsrooms and regulator feeds for searches, new CIOs and allocation changes at accounts on your list, ranked each morning
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Evaluation
Where it breaks
Every performance figure and risk statement must match the approved documents, and compliance rewrites the copy after its window has passed
What changes once it is fixed
Campaigns on approved claims checks every line against the approved fact sheet and word rules, so compliance reviews a draft that already follows them
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Qualification
Where it breaks
Introductory meetings with a CIO stay friendly and never become a place on a shortlist, because the consultant and trustees were never reached
What changes once it is fixed
A lead counts only when a named person at an agreed account states a need or a timing in their own words, such as an allocation the board approved
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Handover
Where it breaks
Marketing counts meetings and sales counts mandates, so nobody can say which activity moved an investor toward an allocation
What changes once it is fixed
Torke's Revenue operations practice sets one set of lifecycle stages and attribution, so the monthly read shows which accounts moved and what each channel did
Who is in the buying group?
One person rarely decides alone, so a lead from the wrong role moves nothing. These are the roles we map at every account on your list.
Who signs
The board of trustees or the investment committee of the pension fund or insurer, on the recommendation of its CIO. At a family office, the principal or the family's investment committee.
Who evaluates
The CIO and the investment team, the investment consultant who runs the search and the due diligence questionnaire, and the risk function that checks the strategy against the fund's investment rules.
Who can block
The consultant, by leaving you off the shortlist, the operational due diligence team, and trustees who cannot explain the allocation to the members they represent.
Which signals open an account in Wealth & Asset Management?
Each signal is a dated, public event a sceptical buyer could check in thirty seconds. Market-wide news can change an account's conditions, and we never write it up as something that company did.
| Signal | What it changes inside the account |
|---|---|
| A pension fund or its consultant publishes a manager search | The fund is allocating now, with stated requirements and a closing date, and the questionnaire decides who reaches the shortlist |
| A new CIO or head of investments is appointed | A new CIO reviews the allocation and the managers they inherited, and has room to change both |
| A pension fund's annual report shows a new strategic asset allocation | Room opens in the asset classes that grew, and the fund will need managers for them |
| A change to the investment rules for pension funds or insurers takes effect | Assets that were outside the rules become possible, and boards ask who can manage them |
| Your strategy reaches a three or five year track record | Searches that set a minimum track record are now open to you, so dormant conversations can restart |
What does a qualified lead look like here?
The CIO of a pension fund on your agreed list replies that the board approved a higher allocation to infrastructure debt at its last meeting and that they want to see your strategy's track record before the consultant drafts the search. The basis for contacting them in their country is recorded, and the account is not an open opportunity in your CRM. That reply, with the allocation decision it answered, is a qualified lead.
A lead counts only when all five facts are recorded, and you have five business days to reject it with a reason. The Torke Service page explains each fact.
- Fact one
- A named person in the buying group
- Fact two
- At an account you agreed to in writing
- Fact three
- A need or timing in their own words
- Fact four
- A lawful basis for contact
- Fact five
- Not already open in your CRM
Where should you start?
Demand is the practice the Diagnostic most often points to for asset managers, because a search is drafted before it is published, and a manager the fund and its consultant already know can be on the list when it goes out.
Every engagement opens with the Diagnostic, two to three weeks that end on one of four decisions: stop, fix one barrier, run one practice, or expand later.
Usual first step for Wealth & Asset Management
The practice the Diagnostic most often points to here, run month by month once it does.
Get in touchHow do Torke Service and Torke Engine help?
The same engines run in both, so you can begin with one and move to the other without starting over.
Torke Service, we run it
For example, a Swiss fixed income boutique selling to German and Nordic pension funds learns in the Diagnostic that its CRM tracks investors but none of the consultants who advise them. Torke runs Demand against both on one agreed list and watches for published searches and allocation changes, while your portfolio managers keep every investor relationship and the due diligence.
How Torke Service worksTorke Engine, your team runs it
Account signals and campaigns on approved claims matter most here. Signals bring the dated changes at pension funds and consultants that open a conversation, and approved claims keep every figure in an ad or a newsletter identical to your approved documents.
For example, a marketer asks the assistant to draft a quarterly newsletter for the consultants on the list and LinkedIn ads for pension fund CIOs in two countries. The assistant returns copy where every performance figure and risk statement is checked against the approved fact sheet and the word rules, with the ad files in LinkedIn's import format and the campaigns paused until a signed-in person releases them.
How Torke Engine worksWhat can you expect?
You can stop after any stage and keep what it produced.
A Diagnostic that can say stop
The Diagnostic takes two to three weeks and ends on one of four decisions, and if the constraint is your product, price or budget, it says so and recommends stopping.
Leads with their evidence attached
Each lead names a person in the buying group at an account agreed in writing, with their need in their own words, and you have five business days to reject it.
A written read every month
You receive the month's leads and a written read of coverage of your named list, spend against plan and a keep, cut or change recommendation, with small results reported as too small to judge.
What do teams in Wealth & Asset Management ask about Torke?
Each answer stands on its own, so you can forward one to a colleague, and an assistant asked the same question can quote it as it is.
Where should an asset manager start with Torke?
An asset manager starts with Torke's Diagnostic, which looks at the investors met who never shortlisted the manager and at whether the account list covers consultants as well as investors. It most often points to the Demand practice, because a pension fund search is drafted before it is published, and a manager the fund and its consultant already know can be on the list when it goes out.
How does an asset manager get onto an investment consultant's shortlist?
Research by Howard Jones and Jose Vicente Martinez found that managers frequently shortlisted by consultants are perceived as more likely to outperform, so a manager the consultant does not know starts behind when a search opens. Torke's Demand practice covers the consultants and the institutional investors on one agreed list together, so both know an asset manager's strategy before a search is announced.
Can Torke write fund marketing that compliance will approve?
Torke Engine's Campaigns on approved claims module checks every line of an asset manager's ads, newsletters and web copy against approved facts and word rules before export, so compliance reviews a draft that already follows them. ESMA's guidelines, applicable since 2 February 2022, require fund marketing to be identifiable as such and to present risks and rewards in an equally prominent manner. Compliance keeps the final review, and paid campaigns arrive paused until a signed-in person releases them.
How long is the sales cycle for asset managers selling to pension funds?
There is no published average. A mandate usually passes a consultant database screen, an RFP and due diligence questionnaire, finalist meetings and a board or investment committee that meets on a fixed calendar, so plan in quarters.
How do investment consultants influence pension fund manager selection?
Consultants often run the search and the due diligence questionnaire, and Cerulli reports that the top five consultants advise on 70 percent of worldwide assets, so a manager missing from their databases rarely reaches a shortlist.
Bring us the problem, and we bring the solution to it
Tell us what your team sells, who buys it and where deals stop moving. You'll get a written reply saying which way of working fits you, or whether a Diagnostic makes sense, and if neither does, the reason.