How to Handle RFPs: Tips for Asset Management Teams

On the surface, receiving a new RFP seems like an exciting opportunity to increase revenues for your company. However, recent research from Cerulli Associates found that 91% of asset managers are struggling to meet deadlines for RFPs. With due diligence forms becoming increasingly thorough and clients asking harder questions to prospective asset managers, responding to every asset management request for proposal (RFP) has become even more challenging and time-consuming.

With an intense compression of timelines and a high number of RFPs, RFP teams of asset management firms grapple with the following challenges:

Asset management is a competitive industry. Investors typically use the RFP process to assess existing relationships and seek new services.

Completing responses to RFPs on time can be your firm’s ticket to more project wins. After all, an RFP response is your opportunity to demonstrate your expertise to potential clients. It’s where you can effectively tell your brand story and prove that you’re the company that can best fulfill their needs.

If you want to make a positive impression and foster valuable partnerships with possible clients, it’s crucial to craft timely and quality responses. It is also necessary to get input from subject matter experts (SMEs) to make accurate and effective RFP responses.

Here are ways to expedite asset management RFPs more efficiently and increase RFP win rates:

While a new RFP is an opportunity, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to respond to every asset RFP you receive. Also, you’re not always going to win every RFP in which you respond. To lighten your workload and improve your win rate, try to be more selective when answering RFPs.

With the sheer volume of RFPs you need to respond to, you would not want to start from scratch with each response. As RFP questions for asset management become more customized, create an RFP library of responses for quicker turnaround.

While it is not advisable to use a generic, templated response, it can be advantageous to maintain a repository of previous answers and proposal elements that can be repurposed and reused. Having a comprehensive answer library can help you save time while ensuring only the highest quality responses.

RFP software is key to creating a collaborative answer library. Not only would it enable you to save past RFP response content but also organize RFP responses using tags, such as security, pricing, or customer references.

With effective tagging, you can narrow down your search for response content. When you receive a new RFP, it will be easier to search and insert the most appropriate answer.

Compliance is essential for asset management. However, it’s difficult to keep up with the constantly changing regulations. Note that any inaccurate data in an RFP response can cost you a lot of money and ruin credibility.

When you use RFP software automation, you can gain the required approvals and remain compliant with security regulations.

It takes time to respond to asset management RFPs. But while it’s important not to rush the RFP response process, meeting deadlines is also crucial to ensure success.

Automating your RFP response process is the best way to reduce ineffective methods and increase RFP win rates. Get in touch with RFP Response Builder today to learn how our automated software solution can streamline and speed up your response process.