MMI Survey Results: The Competitive Reality in Asset Management for <$100B AUM Firms.
Global assets under management (AUM) reached record highs in 2024 and 2025 — $135 trillion in 2024, climbing to $147 trillion by mid-2025. It was the industry’s largest single-year gain in a decade. Yet profitability barely moved. According to McKinsey & Company, margins inched up by just one percentage point, far below past cycles. Oliver Wyman reports that the industry’s total cost base jumped 7% in 2024, led by technology (+9%), distribution (+8%), and investment management (+8%).
Scale continues to be an advantage for success in asset management. Managers with AUM above $500B are regaining efficiency through optimization, while those in the middle are bogged down by diseconomies of scale. That is why Oliver Wyman describes today’s environment as one of accelerating M&A and consolidation: firms seek not just growth, but survival through scope, diversification, and permanent capital.
Product trends only heighten the gap. BCG highlights that active ETFs are compounding at 39% annually, reshaping flows. McKinsey calls out $6–10.5 trillion of “money in motion” over the next ten years as investors reallocate into active fixed income, private markets, and converged public–private portfolios. Meanwhile, private fundraising has slowed sharply — down nearly $700 billion from its 2021 peak — forcing firms to innovate with evergreen structures, semi-liquid funds, and secondaries. The outlier: private investments in the AI eco system. In short: growth is shifting toward alternatives and ETFs, while traditional active equity in mutual funds continues to bleed assets.
For the giant asset managers, the playbook is clear: scale up, acquire, diversify into alternatives, embed AI across the stack. For firms under $100B AUM, the picture is very different. They face the same macro forces — but without the resources to respond in kind.
The Competitive Reality in Asset Management for <$100B Managers
To understand how these pressures feel on the ground, Jacobs & Company conducted a series of surveys and interviews featuring C-suite leaders of asset managers with less than $100B in AUM; it included collaborating with The Money Management Institute’s Thrive program . The results confirm what leaders of <$100B firms experience every day: they are being asked to compete in an environment designed for giants, with far fewer people, smaller budgets, and systems that have not been configured to deliver.
Five challenges stood out:
1. Advisor Coverage Strain
Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents said their sales teams are stretched too thin across too many financial advisors. One executive explained: “We are playing defense rather than offense — just trying to keep up.” Productivity reflects that strain: top-quintile externals generate more than $500 million annually, while bottom-quintile externals average less than $100 million. These firms cluster at the lower end — not due to weaker talent, but because their models lack scale support.
2. CRM and MarTech Limitations
62% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with their CRM/MarTech stack, citing fragmented data, poor integration, and lack of value to the users. Leaders want to compete on intelligence, but their systems remain glorified logbooks rather than growth engines.
3. Underpowered Marketing and Analytics
68% of asset managers reported that marketing is underpowered. Compared to larger peers, emerging firms run with a fraction of the headcount. Without marketing scale, these firms struggle to personalize outreach, measure ROI, or provide sales teams with meaningful insights. One respondent said bluntly: “We cannot keep up with the demand for content and campaigns, let alone prove what is working.”
4. Shelf-Space and Platform Access
Platform access ranked among the top five barriers to growth. Executives admitted that while they had competitive products, they struggled to “get in front of the right people at the right time.” Unlike field sales, where pipelines are transparent, national accounts are opaque. Smaller firms enter the process with fewer resources and less information.
5. Fee Pressure and Long Sales Cycles
Finally, firms described persistent fee compression and elongated cycles. With stretched sales teams and limited marketing support, differentiation becomes harder, and new business takes longer to close.
Alongside their frustrations, our studies also revealed something striking about this segment’s mindset: a high degree of willingness to cooperate, experiment, and share best practices. Nearly 70% of respondents said they would consider partnerships or shared initiatives if it helped accelerate their use of AI or marketing technology. More than 60% said they were open to collaborating with distributors, data providers, or technology vendors to close capability gaps. And 55% said they would exchange insights with peer firms in a controlled environment if it meant shortening their learning curve.
Several respondents emphasized that they “do not need to invent everything themselves” but want practical frameworks that can be adapted quickly. This openness is a crucial asset. It suggests that while <$100B firms lack the scale of their larger competitors, they possess the agility and collaborative mindset needed to move faster once the right frameworks and tools are in place.
The surveys also revealed that while firms may be constrained by resources, they are not confused about direction. Over three-quarters of respondents said they believe AI will meaningfully reshape how asset managers sell and market over the next three years. Yet only 28 percent reported having an articulated AI roadmap or even a pilot underway.
This gap between conviction and capability is striking. Leaders understand that AI can help them target advisors more effectively, personalize engagement, and automate compliance—but most are unsure how to begin. That is precisely where opportunity lies: in turning ambition into action, and ideas into implementation.
