How AI Exposes the Sameness in Manager Messaging
When AI can easily summarize and compare your messaging, sameness becomes glaringly obvious. For prospective clients and consultants who rely on materials like RFPs, websites, and presentations to tell firms apart, distinctiveness matters more than ever.
Curious about how AI might streamline the manager evaluation process, I asked ChatGPT to summarize and compare the “Investment Philosophy and Approach” statements from six U.S. fixed income managers. The idea was simple: cut through the glossy websites and get an unbiased read on how these firms use their own words to describe themselves.
The six firms ranged from roughly $20 to $300 billion in fixed income AUM—each claiming a disciplined, differentiated edge. Using ChatGPT was almost effortless: copy the text, paste the prompt (“Summarize this in one sentence”), repeat, then ask for a comparison. Within minutes, I had a clean, insightful analysis outlining both the common threads and subtle distinctions among them.
The results were revealing (Exhibit 1). ChatGPT not only captured each firm’s message with clarity—it also showed how remarkably similar those messages were. Nearly all emphasized risk-adjusted returns, downside protection, value, research-driven processes, and collaboration. Solid concepts, yes—but table stakes, not differentiators.
A few firms did manage to stand out:
Manager A leaned on “resilience” and its ownership structure as hallmarks of adaptability and stability.
Manager D framed volatility as opportunity—a refreshing, proactive twist.
Others, less so:
Manager B offered a buzzword salad—fundamental, quantitative, systematic, macro, security selection, and even compliance—that blurred rather than clarified.
Manager F stressed multiple sources of return and team breadth, but came off as management-by-committee.
Notably, Managers C and E—the smallest and most bottom-up of the group—completely missed their opportunity to stand out, sounding as if ChatGPT had written their copy for them.
And that’s the real takeaway: when AI can easily summarize and compare your messaging, sameness becomes glaringly obvious. For prospective clients and consultants who rely on materials like RFPs, websites, and presentations to tell firms apart, distinctiveness matters more than ever.
If you’d like an objective, experienced view on how your messaging stands up—and how to make it truly distinctive—let’s talk.
Exhibit 1: Output from ChatGPT comparison of managers’ stated Investment Philosophy and Approach (sourced and cross-checked from manager websites)
