First Steps with ZWEI Wealth

These guidelines serve as a fast-track guide to setting up your company profile and to submitting your first offer. Please read them carefully to ensure a high quality of your offer and improve your chances of winning attractive client business.

Our ZWEI Wealth methodology ranks submitted offers according to their overall offer rating.  This rating is made up of the Provider Rating, the Performance Rating, the Cost Rating and - depending on client demand - an additional Solution Fit Rating.  If you would like to learn more about our methodology, please click here.

There are two types of offers you can submit:

• RFP offers: These are offers you submit in response to a particular RFP. They are tailor-made only for the one particular client on whose behalf we issued the RFP. You need to actively respond to an RFP in order to participate in the search.
  
  To submit an RFP offer, pick an RFP you are interested in and click on the "Create Offer" button.

• Standing offers: These offers are added to our catalogue of investment strategies, which is accessible only to our experts. By submitting a standing offer, you are granting us the right to show the offer to suitable clients and prospects. If clients like your offer, you may be shortlisted for a pitch contest without having to answer an RFP. Standing offers are hence not tailor-made to individual clients, but standardized offers for general use by us in our advisory activities.
  
  To submit a standing offer, select the "Offers" menu and click on the "Create Offer" button shown on the following page. Please ensure to tick the checkbox called "Standing" (for standing offers) to ensure that we receive your submission.

Company Profile

Please ensure that your company profile has been completed before you submit any offer to us. Your profile is automatically added to every offer you submit and displayed prominently to clients. Incomplete profiles will impact the first impression clients have of your firm.

The most important aspects of your company profile are the following.

1. Description*: Clients want to understand who you are, what is your firm's mission and what best describes your company’s set-up and organization (max. 300 characters)

1. Provider USP*: Your unique selling proposition, what distinguishes your firm from the others.
2. Country: The country in which your firm (or the subsidiary on whose behalf you are submitting an offer) is domiciled.
3. Year company founded
4. Assets under management
5. Number of employees
   
   *) Description and Provider USP can be submitted in English, German, and French. We strongly recommend to supply a high-quality text in every language in which you plan to submit offers.

Basic Information

Name

Give your strategy a concise and informative name, such as its marketing name. Your company name will be displayed in front of your offer name so to avoid duplications, please do not use your company name.

The following statement is only relevant if you are submitting a standing offer, not if you are responding to an RFP:

If offering products such as funds, please refrain from using the exact product title, any reference to the type of product (e.g. fund, ETF, certificate), fund tranches, or ISINs. We do not engage in product distribution and your pitch primarily is about the investment strategy on offer, not the structure in which it is managed (mandate, fund, SPV or other structures). E.g. if your product were called the "Global Quality Equities Fund" please rename the standing offer to the "Global Quality Equities Strategy" or simply “Global Quality Equities”.

SAA

Provide the neutral SAA of your strategy, irrespective of current positioning and tactical ranges. We use very high-level SAA categories. If you cannot find a particular asset class, please choose a proxy that best describes the desired risk/return characteristics.

Portfolio Composition

This is an important field that tells clients what their portfolio will be composed of. Please describe the type of instruments used in your strategy and highlight any relevant specifics (max. 300 characters). E.g. are you offering direct investments in single-line stocks and bonds, or an open-ended fund, a closed-end fund, an evergreen fund, and what are their liquidity characteristics, position weights,  or other relevant aspects?

Management Style

This information is absolutely crucial to your pitch. We would like to understand how you manage the portfolio including investment strategy, instrument selection process, implementation, risk management characteristics as well as any other relevant specifics. Avoid copying nondescript marketing and factsheet summaries that are void of relevant details. You are well advised to make good use of the limited space provided (max. 700 characters).

1. We prefer performance reporting according to GIPS®. If your firm is not claiming compliance with GIPS, you may submit performance in accordance with GIPS principles.
   
   Additional guidance is provided below, where GIPS leaves room for interpretation or are less strict than our own disclosure standards.
   
   
2. We use gross returns. For Funds, you may add management fees to returns as a proxy for gross returns.
   
   
3. We use time-weighted returns (TWR). If your strategy does not have TWR, leave performance blank. Do not enter IRRs or other return metrics.
   
   
4. Performance must be calculated in the reporting currency of the RFP. If the currency of your track record does not match the currency of the RFP, then it must be converted to allow us to compare all offers amongst each other.
   
   
5. Submit only full-year performance. E.g. if your strategy does not have a live performance on 1st January then you may not include the launch year in the track record, because we treat all time period returns as covering the entire year.
   
   
6. Submit as many years as possible as long as you have full-year performance. We backfill missing years with median data in order to compute comparable returns for all offers.
   
   
7. Leave fields blank and do not enter zeroes if you do not have a track record for any given year. We will treat an entry of zero as if your strategy returned zero.
   
   
8. Simulated performance
   As a general rule, we accept only live track records but no simulated performance (such as, in particular, backtested and other hypothetical performance data).
   
   There are only very few exceptions to this rule, and the rationale for allowing an exception usually is that a live track record exists but it needs to be transformed in a particular way to suit our needs.
   
   Example 1: Combining two live track records into one new SAA
   
   We are searching for a strategy with 75% equities and 25% bonds, but you only offer one strategy with 100% equities and one with 100% bonds.
   
   In this case, it is acceptable to calculate the simulated performance of a hypothetical portfolio that is composed of the exact split we are looking for. You may make reasonable assumptions for the purpose of calculating results, such as determining the periodicity of rebalancing (e.g. quarterly, monthly, buy-and-hold). Note that your method of calculation and assumptions need to be disclosed in the field "response to specific requirements". Also note that you need to adjust and submit the cost for this hypothetical portfolio accordingly.
   
   Example 2: Continuing the very same strategy in a different form
   
   Your strategy was hitherto managed as a separately managed account, but you have newly launched the very same strategy as a fund.
   
   Your strategy was hitherto managed as a normal portfolio from which assets could be freely withdrawn, and you are re-launching the very same strategy as a new retirement product from which the funds can only be withdrawn upon retirement.
   
   In such cases, you may concatenate the track records of the existing product and the new product. Note that switching employer and continuing the same strategy for a new firm is not covered by this exception. Also note that strategies where vintage plays a role are also not covered by this exception (e.g. private market funds that are relaunched with new vintage). Please adjust concatenated track records for relevant cost differences.

The overarching principle is to create transparency about costs and hence to disclose the total ongoing annual cost to the client. This includes all direct and indirect costs, as well as external costs incurred by third parties who may be part of your product setup. Our disclosure requirements thus may go beyond what is required by GIPS or by law.

Total ongoing annual cost does not include one-off costs such as subscription and redemption fees, the initial cost of building up a portfolio at inception, commitment fees, or any other kind of cost that is not incurred on an annual basis. We may ask for a separate disclosure of such one-off costs where relevant.

All cost fields are added together so please ensure that their total reflects the true total annual ongoing cost to the client. Only granted discounts are not automatically reflected in your pricing.

Custody

• All costs of custody, including those charged by the custodian himself and by third-party custodians.
• If you are offering an all-in custody fee model, please enter the all-in custody fee here.

Transactions

• All non-refundable costs of trading, such as brokerage, commissions, exchange fees, or non-refundable taxes charged both by your own firm and by third parties.
• Please do not include recoverable taxes such as withholding taxes.

Management

• All management and/or advisory fees.
• If performance fees apply, please add their annualized impact to management fees.
• If you are offering an all-in fee, please enter it here. Please ensure to add all costs not included in the all-in fee in the appropriate cost disclosure fields.

Product

• All explicit and implicit product costs e.g. Ongoing Cost (formerly Ongoing Charges, TER) of funds, structured products and other products used in the portfolio, including the cost of transactions and performance fees of those products.
• Please do not split up your product cost across the other categories, especially if you are offering a fund or other product.

Other

Any other costs not included in any of the categories above (e.g. account fees, fees for tax reports, costs incurred by any other third parties such as pension foundation fees, etc.).

Granted Discount

Many providers offer exclusive discounts that are available to clients of ZWEI Wealth. Use this field to declare how many percentage points the discount is worth, which you have included in the cost fields explained above. Note that your pricing must already have the discount deducted and it is not automatically reflected in your pricing.

For example, if your usual management fee were 0.80% but you are offering clients of ZWEI Wealth 0.70%, then you would enter a management fee of 0.70% and a granted discount of 0.10%.

Performance Fee

If you charge a performance fee, please disclose that you do and explain its mechanism such as high-water mark, hurdle rate, etc.

Our open platform is competitive and you are well advised to ensure a high quality of the offers you submit. The only information our experts and clients get to see in the first round is a summary of your company, strategy description, track record, and cost. Think of your offer as a one-pager that is your only pitch. 

We offer a free and highly efficient platform that enables you to submit offers with very little time investment, by focusing only on the most relevant aspects in the first round. We will follow up and collect additional information in later rounds.

The ZWEI Method – our four rating components – produces a total score according to which we rank all offers. We aim to match the most suitable investment strategies with our client needs.

Take advantage of our Advanced Package to help you improve your win ratio.  Advanced providers get access to analytics and detailed feedback reports to improve their chances.  A dedicated key account manager will help you set up a dedicated landing page on our Transparency Portal and invite you to present to our experts at various events.