With some simple information regarding your background and plans for your Fund, we can help you tailor the perfect Fund to fit your objectives. We invite you to quickly complete the following questionnaire to help us design your Fund.This questionnaire is designed to make you think about the features that you may need in your Fund structure as well as the ones you don’t want. The questionnaire is divided into seven major headings: (i) How you manage money, (ii) your Business Plan, (iii) the Fund Jurisdiction, (iv) Fees and Share Classes (v) Fund liquidity rules, (vi) Service Providers and (vii) Dealing and Execution.

The economics of operating a Fund are simple. Fund expenses are largely fixed costs so that the average cost falls as Assets Under Management (AUM) increase. Fund expenses detract from performance so it is important that you have a business plan to grow AUM to a level at which the costs do not reduce return so much as to turn investors away from your Fund.

The majority of the world’s Funds are established in the Cayman Islands primarily because it is tax-neutral with respect to all investors. Other jurisdictions such as Luxembourg, Ireland, the British Virgin Islands, the Channel Islands and soon Singapore offer similar tax treatment. The choice of jurisdiction depends on your client base, cost and whether there are any aspects of your investment process that are restricted within a specific jurisdiction.

What fee do you intend to charge investors and in what functional form? The use of share classes to differentiate fees between investors can be very useful. However, too many share classes will add expense to the Fund Administration cost .

The nature of the asset class you manage largely drives the liquidity rules that apply. Private assets tend to be locked up for long periods of time while public market investors can offer monthly or even daily liquidity.

There are rules and regulations governing the proper administration of a Fund. For instance, a Fund must have a board of directors, a licenced Fund manager, an independent Fund Administrator, in most cases an Auditor and in some cases a custodian. The Fund must file annual reports with the regulator and, in most cases, must also be formally registered as a public offer vehicle. All these actors combine to give investors the comfort that their interests are being protected, that the Fund is independently and objectively valued. They are also expenses that the Fund needs to bear.

* Disclosure: First Degree does NOT receive any commission, payment in kind or incentive from any service provider to the Fund. Our stated fee is the full extent of our earning as the licenced Fund Manager

A condition of being the licenced Manager for a fund is that all investment decisions must be made by a designated representative of the licencee. In practice, this means that decisions to buy or sell must be made by employees of First Degree. These decisions can be made with the advice of others or they can be made by the employee themselves