Planners to get hedge fund education

TheAlternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) is to launch a series of forums in a bid to educate financial planners on the merits of investing in hedge funds and other alternative assets at a time when many of the more traditional asset classes are underperforming.

AIMA chairman Damien Hatfield says the association plans to become more aggressive and will host a series of education seminars for planners later this year.

“I feel we have to be a lot more challenging particularly in the current environment ... We have to educate financial planners in understanding that they may need to supplement traditional asset classes with long-short strategies,” Hatfield says.

The move is partially in response to the negative press hedge funds received following recent comments made by theAustralian Prudential and Regulation Authority(APRA) Hatfield says.

“In addition to the education forums, we’re also going to get very aggressive in developing dialogue with APRA, as there were a lot of misconceptions in its recent paper on hedge funds,” he says.

Hatfield points out that as markets are no longer bullish, portfolio construction may require long-short strategies.

Executive chairman of Goldlink Capital Richard Kovacs says eduction is imperative for the planning fraternity to feel comfortable with the more complex strategies that his group adopts through Goldlink’s multi-arbitrage Income Plus offering.

“There are about 20,000 planners in Australia but we’re only going to target 30 to 50, as there aren’t too many that have an appetite for this type of investing,” Kovacs says.