What is investment management agreement review?
Investment management agreement review (IMA review) is the work of reading an IMA, its investment guidelines, fee schedule and side letters, and making sure every clause becomes an obligation the team that owns it has accepted — contract obligation management for an asset manager. Investment Management Agreement Review does it with seven agents that cite every obligation to its page, re-read it independently, test side letters against the agreement, check MFN clauses against every comparable fee, draft and dry-run compliance rules, and route each obligation until its team lead accepts. Counsel approves.
What is an MFN clause in an investment management agreement, and how is it tracked?
A most-favored-nation (MFN) clause promises the client any lower fee the manager gives a comparable account; at Marlow, any Core Plus Fixed Income separate account of equal or smaller size. The MFN agent tests each clause against every comparable client's billed fee — strategy, size test, carve-outs and dates, each cited — prices any gap in dollars before the next invoice, and re-runs whenever any fee in the book changes, and nightly. Billing proposes the fix and Legal approves it; the agent never changes a fee.
How does a side letter change an investment management agreement?
The Conflict agent compares the side letter with the IMA and its schedules clause by clause and applies the precedence clause. In the demo it finds three conflicts: securities lending the IMA allowed is now prohibited, a monthly report tightens from 15 to 10 business days, and a 15% limit reads two ways, so Legal gets both readings and decides.
How are investment guidelines coded into compliance rules?
For each restriction the Rule agent drafts the compliance-engine rule, reads it back in plain English to show it says what the clause says, and dry-runs it on the account's current holdings, so investment guideline compliance starts from the clause and an existing breach is found before go-live. The rule analyst codes and checks it, and a second analyst releases it; the agent never switches a rule live.
What did the SEC find about advisory fee calculations?
In a November 2021 Risk Alert the SEC's Division of Examinations reported advisory fee deficiencies at most of about 130 advisers it examined, including fees different from the contractually agreed rates and breakpoints not applied. Here every fee term is extracted with its page and accepted by Billing, and every MFN clause is checked against the billed fees of comparable accounts before the next invoice.
Does it read agreements in other languages?
Yes. Agreements, side letters and amendments are read in the language they were signed in — the demo includes German, Dutch, French and Japanese documents — and every obligation shows the original beside the English, cited to its page.
Do people stay in control?
Yes. Lane leads accept their own obligations, the onboarding manager submits the register, counsel approves it and every ambiguity and fee change, a second analyst releases each rule, and the relationship manager sends client notices Legal approved. The agents never accept, approve, change a fee, release a rule or contact a client, and the system blocks anyone from checking their own work.
How long does it take to go live?
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your routing rules, approval roles and a sample of your IMAs, guidelines and side letters — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. We will walk you through it on your own agreements first.