Recently, a fund manager posted a "second deletion" event, exposing the internal control compliance and public opinion management of some fund companies.
Today, it is not new for fund managers to open accounts on social platforms. This is not only to cooperate with the company's investment and education work, but also a necessary link to create personal IP. However, in recent years, a considerable part of the negative and even fringe news also originated from these social platforms. Some public opinion events that have a greater impact will even affect the image of fund companies and even the entire fund industry. Therefore, for a considerable number of fund companies, public opinion is more fierce than tigers.
Although fund companies have differences in management scale, development history, number of employees and so on, they are all trying to survive and develop without exception, and are unable to adopt a "one size fits all" approach to Internet social platforms. Under this trend, fund companies need to solve two core issues: whether there is an inevitable contradiction between fund managers building personal IP and fund companies' compliance risk management? How should fund companies balance the two? That is to say, where are the optimal boundaries of risk control compliance and the reasonable boundaries of fund managers' statements?
Fund manager "delete in seconds"
The "second deletion" event originated from Li Bingwei, the fund manager of Dongxing Fund. Recently, he opened a personal account on Little Red Book, and then published two posts in succession, introducing his personal resume, investment research, and market comments on the recent market. But soon, Li Bingwei deleted two posts and replaced the small red book avatar. The head portrait used to be a personal photo of Li Bingwei, but now it has been replaced with a landscape map. However, the name of Xiaohongshu's account has not changed, and it is still the name related to investment.
More specifically, the content released by Li Bingwei is mainly about personal investment ideas and products currently under management, which is not very different from the content of other fund managers on social platforms. Li Bingwei also stated at the end of the post that these only represent his personal views, not the views of the fund manager, do not constitute actual investment suggestions, nor represent the past and future positions of the fund.
The focus of the market is why the post was deleted quickly after it was published? In this regard, an internal public opinion manager of a public offering analyzed the Chinese reporter of the securities firm and said that Li Bingwei's move probably did not pass the internal compliance review of Dongxing Fund, and the fund company negotiated with the fund manager to delete it after finding out. The Chinese reporter of the securities firm consulted Dongxing Fund on this matter, but no reply has been received as of press release.
"The fund company generally does not interfere with the release of personal daily news (such as running and basking in dolls), but if it releases information related to the company or the market, the relevant public opinion monitoring departments will generally find it, and we will remind the fund manager after finding it, and if it involves major compliance issues, it will report it to the audit department at the first time." The above public offering public opinion manager said.
Among the four compliance concepts of fund companies mentioned in the Compliance Management Standards for Securities Investment Fund Management Companies (hereinafter referred to as the "Standards"), one of them is "compliance is the basis for the survival of the company". According to the Regulations, other senior executives of the fund company shall take the initiative to report to the Chief Inspector in time when they find violations of laws and regulations or potential compliance risks during the operation of their respective fields. The inspector general has the right to full information and independent investigation.
"The fund company does not allow fund managers or researchers to make their own voice on the Internet, unless they have been verified by real name and filed internally, if any information related to the company or investment is involved. Even if the information is released through a privately registered account, although it does not explicitly involve the company and personal career information, it may also be found by netizens from the released information clues, which will also lead to public opinion risk. " A small and medium-sized public offering insider told the Chinese reporter of the securities firm.
Negative public opinion puzzles the development of fund companies
The reason why fund companies emphasize internal control so much is largely related to the public opinion ecology of the fund industry in recent years. In recent years, a considerable part of the fund's negative and even fringe news originates from active social media such as Little Red Book. A few public opinion events that have a greater impact may even affect the image of fund companies and even the entire fund industry. In terms of statistics, this is more intuitive.
According to the statistical data obtained exclusively by the Chinese reporter of the securities firm from Shanghai Julai Financial Information Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Julai Financial Services"), the number of initial negative reports on the public fund industry showed a significant rise quarter by quarter from January 1, 2020 to the end of the first quarter of 2024. The initial quarterly data was less than 400, and then exceeded 1000 in the second quarter of 2023, After that, it once exceeded 1400 and remained above 1000 by the end of the first quarter of this year. Taking the first quarter of this year as an example, there are four main reasons for public opinion: first, public opinion related to public fund compensation, layoffs and personnel disputes. Second, the performance of holding period funds is poor, and there are intensive open redemptions. The third is the public opinion on fund liquidation and fund issuance, and the public opinion on more fund liquidations and the scale of raised funds. The fourth is the public opinion related to supervision and punishment and credit rating. The main carrier of public opinion release involves social media platforms such as Weibo, Little Red Book, and Tiao Yin.
Based on this, the review of public statements made by fund managers has become an important part of public opinion management of fund companies. "Funds are an industry of wealth management for all, and improper comments may cause adverse effects, or even misleading effects. What we are most worried about is that improper comments may lead to online discussions, or even large-scale group events such as investor rights protection." said the internal public opinion manager of the above public offering.
"In recent years, the spread of typical public opinion events in the fund industry tends to originate from the Internet and new media, especially microblog, Xiaohongshu and other platforms, which are more likely to become the source of public opinion." Wang Wenqing, the founder and general manager of Julai Financial Services, analyzed the Chinese journalists of securities firms. From the perspective of the characteristics of public opinion in the fund industry, events focused on "people" are easier to ferment and become "people eat melons" topic of conversation. Fund managers are the actual "spokesmen" of fund products and fund companies, especially the new generation of well-known fund managers with large management scale. Investors and the society pay high attention to them, and every word and deed may be reported and discussed by the media.
"Under the 'waterfall' information bombing effect, once the non business negative news spread in the fund industry, Jimin, as a fund product consumer, often expresses dissatisfaction with the poor performance of the fund product in the comment area. Emotional information expression, with the support of microblog, small red book, and dithering algorithm streaming mechanism, is guided into a public opinion event." Wang Wenqing said.
There is no direct conflict between compliance and creating personal IP
Although "public opinion is stronger than tiger", the business development and brand marketing of fund companies cannot be separated from social media. From some cases, Internet platform empowerment can indeed bring "win-win" effects to individuals and companies. For example, Sheng Fengyan, manager of Western Lide Fund, Yang Delong of Qianhai Kaiyuan Fund, Li Muyang of Huatai Birui, and Chen Ao of Boshi Fund. In this view, there is no inevitable contradiction between fund managers building personal IP and fund companies' compliance risk management.
"There is no direct conflict between the two. Creating a personal IP requires not only brand marketing promotion support, but also strong reputation risk management level and ability." Wang Wenqing believes that fund managers open personal social accounts to express investment research opinions and interact with basic people, which is a way of investment companionship and plays an important role in investor education, It can also encourage fund managers to value the trust of investors more and effectively maintain their own reputation. "It should not be avoided or prohibited because of risks. It is not conducive to the healthy development of the industry and may also deepen the distrust of investors to simply refuse to speak because of fear of saying the wrong thing."
It should be pointed out that "at present, there is a need for the fund manager group to expand personal popularity." The aforementioned public offering people frankly said that in large fund companies, there are more investment research personnel, but the famous ones are often a few fund managers, while others have been neglected for a long time due to small management scale or poor performance and other reasons. In addition, fund managers of small companies also have similar appeals. Such companies do not have a strong sense of existence. Fund managers want to improve their personal reputation through the network platform. It is a common way to speak out about industry or investment events.
Under normal circumstances, the publicity resources of fund managers are allocated by the product publicity department of the fund company. Whether it is an exclusive interview with authoritative media or a hot interpretation, it will favor well-known fund managers. According to the information learned by the Chinese journalists of securities companies, this has gradually caused dissatisfaction among some fund managers in some fund companies. Previously, the position of a public equity fund manager was dispersed and the long-term performance was stable. However, due to the lack of short-term performance and my lack of personality, I could not get the company's resource tilt for a long time. Subsequently, the fund manager dared to talk about this matter only after he changed his job to a new owner, revealing his dissatisfaction with the "bias" of the old owner.
Know the boundary and scale of speech in advance
This leads to a question: How should fund companies find a balance between compliance and personal Internet empowerment?
According to the introduction of the aforementioned insiders of small and medium-sized public offerings, the current platforms for fund managers to release views are mainly Ant Fortune, Headline or Flush, which are part of the fund managers' cooperation in product marketing, and are basically written by the fund managers themselves (or by the staff of the online finance department, which is confirmed by the fund managers themselves) and confirmed in the internal system. There are two key points: First, the fund manager's social platform account, as long as it involves company and professional identity information, must be filed internally by the company; Second, the relevant published content must be confirmed by the content operator and the fund manager, and can be officially released only after passing the compliance review.
At the same time, the aforementioned internal public opinion manager of the public offering said that, in the current environment, in fact, most fund managers have a relatively high awareness of compliance. "Some fund managers send a circle of friends to ask us whether it is appropriate."
Wang Wenqing suggested that fund companies should do a good job of reputation risk compliance training in advance to let fund managers know the "boundaries and dimensions of speech" and the main characteristics of improper speech, and at the same time strengthen the process management of interaction between fund managers and investors. In terms of content review, fund managers can be provided with assistants who are familiar with communication business to assist them from the perspective of promoting compliance and public opinion risk, and submit the content that is difficult to make a judgment to the risk control department for final decision.
Wang Wenqing said in particular that in recent years, star fund managers' reputation has declined due to low performance, and investors have also "disenchanted". After the fund industry has entered the "de star" trend, there will be many risks and hidden dangers in each stage of personal IP from building trust, attracting traffic, converting purchase to after-sales, of which the after-sales stage is the most prominent. Issues such as "poor investment performance leads to lower trust of holders" and "stability of fund managers' tenure" have a negative impact, The fund company should pay attention to the negative impact of such issues, and carefully evaluate them in combination with business strategy and brand strategy. It is not advisable to blindly build personal IP.
