The main drivers for members of staff leaving were more competitive poaching of talent, firm restructurings - such as following a merger/acquisition - and decreased bonus pools. Credit: iStock
Asset management firms are expecting a series of more positive staffing trends for 2026, with increased hiring and number of hours spent in the office, with a drop in overall team turnover rates.
The latest Magellan Advisory Partners Industry Outlook for the year collected data from 80 heads of teams across both alternative and traditional asset management firms ranging from less than $1bn in assets under management (AUM) to over $5trn.
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Over the past two years, investment firms have embarked on a range of cost-cutting measures in a bid to trim the fat, as business expenses increase and ongoing fee competition with passives makes it tougher to market more expensive active mandates.
The latter is set to remain a major concern for the year but, according to the survey, asset managers are preparing to spend more on their staff.
Additionally, the expectations on key staff turnover turnover has decreased significantly since Q1 2025, going from 45% to 29% this year.
The main drivers for members of staff leaving were more competitive poaching of talent, firm restructurings - such as following a merger/acquisition - and decreased bonus pools.
Particularly on the former, the asset management heads said there was "more pressure than ever on distribution teams to deliver results, and several new global and regional leadership changes have been made over the past 12 months", which was clashing against "rigid" budgets.
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At the same time, 54% of respondents said they are looking to add members of staff in 2026, a stabilisation to the hiring trend version in the three previous years of the Magellan Barometers report.
"There is clear stability in market sentiment amongst distribution professionals this year vs previous years," the report stated.
"Many are reporting elevated search activity, higher volumes of requests for proposal/information (RFP/RFI) and an expectation that clients will transact on both public and private market products."
As part of the aforementioned cost-saving measures carried out by companies last year, this often involved reducing headcounts.
Earlier today (13 January) it was revealed that the world's biggest asset manager, BlackRock, was cutting 250 staffers, some of which will come from its investment team, after having cut 500 employees in 2025.
At the end of last year, Investment Week reported that Aegon UK had embarked in a firm-wide wave of redundancies amid a cost-cutting restructure.
Major UK names such as Jupiter, Schroders, Liontrust and Aberdeen all underwent various levels of product and team rationalisations in an attempt to streamline their businesses, with changes and exits from various teams.
Additionally, 25% of the Magellan survey's respondents said they were looking to increase the number of offices, while the majority (75%) said they would be sticking to their current square footage.
Just 4% of respondents predicted they will decrease their office space this year.
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The number of days employees will spend in the office versus working from home is expected to tip back more towards pre-Covid levels, in a continuation of mandated in-office hours on the rise.
In 2025, 3.3 days a week were spent in the office and this is expected to go up to 3.8 days this year – excluding fully flexible employees.
The US is a leader on this trend, especially in New York, where extra long work days are a well entrenched part of Wall Street's working culture.
According to the report, many alternatives firms and US-headquartered businesses are broadly communicating to employees worldwide that the expectation is four to five days in the office a week, as we move through 2026.
For now, however, the most common response to the survey remained to be three to four days in the office as the prevailing norm.
