Third party marketer Apostle Asset Management has hired a former employee of Renaissance Investment Management in the

UK to a client servicing role, and is looking to beef up its global equity
capability by expanding its fund manager line up.


Karyn West, managing director of Apostle,
said Lucinda Hill joined Apostle’s 12-strong team from Renaissance in mid-July
in a client servicing capacity.

She is responsible for dealing with client
queries, and will “grow with the role to eventually handling some of the review
that we do”, West said.

While many finance companies have been trimming
staff as a result of the global downturn, West said many of the smaller
boutiques like Apostle already ran a “lean” business.

“We ran things lean so we didn’t need to be
doing a lot of cutting back in the bad times and looking forward we need to add
to resourcing, particularly in client servicing,” she said.

“When you go through difficult periods in
markets it’s more important than ever to make sure your servicing is being done
really well. The types of queries we’ve had over last 12 months have been more
frequent, more technical, and different types of questions are being asked.”

With the Australian Prudential Regulation
Authority and other regulators demanding more information from super funds,
West said Apostle is fielding more questions relating to business-to-business
issues, including liquidity, cash flows and fees.

“Because APRA and the regulators are more
demanding now on super funds for information, that has a flow-on effect,” she
said. “They are demanding super funds keep them appraised of any performance
[issues], liquidity terms. We’re getting a lot of queries about management
fees. At the moment the industry is focused on receiving timely liquidity and
fee-type information.”

Meanwhile, West said Apostle is looking to
add some additional global equity capabilities to the firm’s existing line up.

“We’ll be putting on a couple of people in
anticipation of some of the new expertise we’re looking to add to our range of
current products,” she said.

Apostle’s manager line up includes hedge
funds manager Aurora Investment Management, international small and mid cap
equity manager Highclere International Investors, fixed income and equity
manager Loomis Sayles, and multi-strategy equity and fixed income manager
Vaughan Nelson Investment Management.

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