Editorial
What we can check, and what we can't.
A fund's factsheet states its benchmark, its fee and its top ten holdings, and states them by law. It says nothing about who sits on the interview panel or what the case study actually asks. That gap between the regulatory record and the hiring process is what this page is about.
What earns a citation here
Asset managers publish more than almost anyone else in finance, and by law rather than by choice: annual reports, interim results, factsheets, KIIDs and prospectuses state a fund's size, its fees, its benchmark and its top holdings on the record. None of that says how the firm actually interviews. A figure from a filing or a factsheet is stated outright; a claim about the process itself is attributed to whoever described it.
The order the work happens in
Nobody drafts from memory. Every firm guide starts as a notes file: the manager's own filings and careers pages, pulled and dated; the strategies it actually runs; whether the junior seat is on the desk or one step removed. A sentence only makes it into the published guide if that notes file already backs it with a source, so writing and sourcing never happen in the same pass.
What goes stale, and how fast
A graduate intake has a published closing date; miss the window and the article is wrong until it's fixed. A job posting has no closing date at all — it just vanishes once the seat is filled, which is why postings are this network's single most common source of a broken link. Every date-bound claim carries the day it was checked, and a scheme that has closed is marked closed rather than quietly left pointing at a dead page.
Corrections
A wrong number gets fixed the moment anyone here spots it or hears about it from a reader, with a dated note left at the bottom of the piece. If the error was the kind that could have sent someone into an interview with the wrong fee, the wrong benchmark or a closed scheme they thought was open, the note moves to the top of the article as well. Flag one at info@assetmanagementinterview.com — the page and the specific line are enough.
What a firm guide draws on
Listed with the strongest first. A source near the bottom can shade how a paragraph reads, but it never gets to be the only thing holding up a number.
- A listed manager's own audited annual report and half-year results, filed rather than announced
- Fund factsheets, KIIDs and prospectuses, which state a fund's benchmark, fees and holdings on the record
- Graduate scheme and analyst programme pages, read on the date cited, because the window closes and the page often disappears with it
- Salary ranges now published on EU and EEA job postings under the bloc's pay transparency rules — a source that did not exist a few years ago
- Regulatory registers such as the FCA register or SEC EDGAR, to confirm who is actually authorised to run what
- A manager's own strategy, team and careers pages, noted alongside the date they were read
- Trade and business press with a named byline and a masthead, such as the Financial Times or Ignites
- What candidates themselves say about a process, always flagged as one person's account and never asked to carry a number by itself
AI disclosure
Large language models sit on the drafting side of this operation, Claude among them. Handed a notes file with sources already attached, one will produce a workable first pass and catch it when a later section quietly contradicts an earlier one. What goes live is never that output untouched.
The responsibility does not move. If a stated fee or a scheme's closing date is wrong, that is the editor's error, not a tool's. A model gets read more sceptically than any of the sources above, not less, because it is the one contributor here capable of stating a wrong number in a perfectly confident sentence.
Where the boundary sits
Where it helps
- Drafting a first pass of an article once the notes file exists
- Suggesting quiz questions an editor then keeps, edits or throws out
- Noticing a fee or a date that looks stale against a fresher check
- Smoothing a paragraph that reads awkwardly, without touching its claims
Where it stays out
- Inventing a figure it doesn't have a document open in front of it for
- Standing in for the person who checks the source actually says it
- Making the call on what is ready to publish
- Sending anything to a reader without a person having looked at it first
Who stands behind this
Rowan Ashby directs the editorial work here, publishing under that name — it is the pen name this publication writes under, not a claim about a specific person's employment history. No asset manager, index provider or graduate scheme named on this site has ever paid for space in it or reviewed a draft before publication. A mention of Finance Interview Prep, when one appears, is an editor's link inside a sentence, never a paid slot.
Questions about these standards or corrections: info@assetmanagementinterview.com