Asset Manager Qualifications & Skills

What Qualifications are Needed to Be an Asset Manager?

Regardless of a company’s core business activity, it must utilise various assets to achieve its objectives. These assets can be physical, like the building the business operates out of or the machinery. They can also be digital, such as intellectual property, patents, or financial investments. In all cases, the company needs dedicated professionals to manage these assets.

Asset managers are highly experienced professionals who have a deep understanding of their specific asset classes. Asset managers should specialise in a niche, such as infrastructure or digital asset management. They should avoid being generalists.

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Academic Qualifications

There are no strict educational qualification requirements for asset managers. A graduate degree is necessary, but the specialisation would depend upon the type of assets the manager handles. For example, if the company owns industrial machinery, a degree in industrial engineering could be valuable. Similarly, understanding IP or patent law would be important for performing one’s duties. This is especially true if the assets are mainly intellectual property or patents.

Asset management roles are open to professionals from many specialisations. Therefore, professionals with a wide range of backgrounds can enter asset management positions. For example, a company can manage assets considered artworks. Therefore, the asset manager must have experience handling those investments.

It makes sense to understand standards like ISO 55000 for infrastructure-related assets. ISO 55000 is the international standard for asset management. It is explicitly designed for people and organisations involved in asset management.

The skills of professionals managing financial assets can be different. It would be beneficial to hold a degree in business or finance and then pursue an advanced MBA programme. You can apply for several professional certificates. These include the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA). Asset managers work for companies managing financial assets. They also work for financial services firms. They manage the assets of third parties, including high-net-worth individuals and retail customers.

Work Experience/Internships

Asset managers should focus on a specific area for internships and work experience. This way, they add the most value to their CV when applying for an asset management position. To get more tips about building a CV for an asset management position, please follow the article on CV building.

Another thing to note is that infrastructure asset management roles increasingly require an environmentally friendly approach. Any experience with that might increase the candidate’s chances of securing an interview call. Therefore, experience or education in the tech field is necessary for IT asset management. The right kind of experience is thus dependent on the type of role that is on offer.

What Skills Does an Asset Manager Need?

Domain Experience in Their Specific Niche

As we have demonstrated above, the actual job of an asset manager can vary significantly depending on the underlying assets they manage. For example, it would make little sense for an asset manager who handles real estate assets to immediately switch to something completely different. They shouldn’t switch to something like intellectual property assets.

Therefore, asset managers need to double down on an area of specialisation. They should accumulate as much valuable work experience as possible. Many assets can be technically challenging or expensive to manage. Therefore, asset managers need the right skills and domain expertise. They should manage those assets efficiently and derive the most productive use of them.

Asset Valuation

Performing a valuation of an asset can be as much of an art as a technical, formula-driven exercise. The reason for this is that the value of an investment based on its future cash flows can be challenging to predict and sensitive to hundreds of unknown variables. An asset manager would need to look at all this data. They would analyse historical trends. They made sensible predictions about future events to gauge an asset’s viability.

A valuation can become increasingly challenging for assets with relatively long lifetimes. As the time of the projection gets longer, the accuracy of those projections undoubtedly diminishes. Asset managers need more than just technical analysis and modelling skills. They also need a sound instinct that comes from years of on-the-job experience.

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Multitasking Ability

A sizable company will invariably have many assets to manage, some of which are in-house. Third-party vendors might also control many of these. An asset manager would have the ultimate responsibility to ensure the proper functioning of all these assets. This requires the ability to handle multiple stakeholders and tasks concurrently.

In times of crisis, the number of requests an asset manager receives can increase exponentially. This can get especially tricky. The ability to manage situations gracefully during such events is crucial for asset managers. Business continuity planning prepares for such eventualities, and asset managers play a pivotal role.

People Management Skills

Asset managers typically work with numerous third-party vendors and need to utilise their services in a cost-efficient manner. Service-level agreements provide in-depth coverage of the majority of third-party providers’ asset management processes. However, asset managers still need to intervene occasionally to address any exceptions. The ability to be diplomatic and tactful in such situations can be invaluable.

These diplomatic skills are also essential during contract negotiations. These contracts can be part of the asset purchase or negotiations with third-party vendors to manage and maintain the assets.

Asset managers coordinate with the general services manager, the maintenance manager, and other such teams. “When it comes to managing internal stakeholders, they handle it in this way.”

Project Management Skills

The acquisition and maintenance of certain assets can be large projects in themselves. To manage these projects successfully, asset managers must possess the skills necessary to oversee large-scale projects.

Budget Management

Asset managers can add significant value to the company through the cost-effective management of various assets under their care. Today, it is not entirely uncommon to see asset managers with exact budgets for cost savings that they must achieve annually.

Managing your department or assets while staying within budget is an essential skill. It plays a prominent role in benchmarking the actual performance of an asset manager. Thus, this skill can have a significant impact on the year-end performance appraisal. It also affects the asset manager’s salary increments and cash bonuses.

Find out more about what being an asset manager is all about. The following articles cover the job description, salaries, CV-building tips, and more.

Job Description & Profile, Salary & Pay, CV Template & Examples, How to Become.

Search Jobs to discover the asset manager job roles we currently have available.

See also the Operations Manager Job Description and Profile here.