In the world of fund management, success stories are easy to find. You’ll hear about the multi-million dollar raises, the high-performing quarters, the new fund launches. But you’ll rarely hear about what happens when a fund closes — not because it failed, but because it was the right thing to do.
A few years ago, I made the difficult but deliberate decision to wind down my Variable Capital Company (VCC) fund. I was among the first in Singapore to launch one under the MAS framework — and perhaps the first to voluntarily exit. On paper, it might have looked like a loss. But in truth, it was about governance.
The structure we had designed no longer matched the direction the fund was heading, and continuing would have meant compromising on operational standards I couldn’t stand behind. So I made the call to close it. Quietly. Carefully. Responsibly. In an industry where longevity is often mistaken for success, that wasn’t easy. But it was necessary.
What surprised me wasn’t the challenge of closing the fund itself — although that came with its fair share of legal, administrative, and emotional hurdles. What surprised me most was how little support or guidance existed around the process. Everyone knows how to celebrate a launch. No one tells you how to close with integrity. And certainly not how to speak about it afterward.
That experience forced me to confront a deeper issue: a significant disconnect between how we train fund managers and what they actually need to succeed. Most fund management education today is either too generic or too technical. You either get high-level theory, or you get dense regulatory memos. Neither prepares you for the real-world decisions you have to make once you’re managing other people’s capital.
We don’t talk enough about how to operate a fund. How to staff one. How to work with lawyers, custodians, and administrators who are juggling multiple clients and timelines. How to make decisions when fundraising slows down, or when compliance bottlenecks cost you investors. Most importantly, we don’t teach people how to apply judgment — not just knowledge — when the stakes are high and the markets are moving faster than your infrastructure can keep up.
I’ve seen this firsthand, and not just in my own experience. I’ve interviewed and mentored countless professionals across the fund ecosystem. One theme comes up repeatedly: many people operating in this space don’t fully understand the structure of the funds they’re managing. They know how to pitch performance. But ask them about shareholder rights, fund audits, exit timelines, or how investor redemptions are prioritised — and the answers get shaky.
That’s not their fault. It’s a system issue. Our industry celebrates results but skimps on the reality of how those results are built — and sustained.
In my case, setting up the fund was difficult. Shutting it down properly was even more complex. The learning curve was steep and isolating. Just opening a bank account took nearly a year due to compliance delays — an issue that most playbooks don’t warn you about. As the timeline stretched, warm leads grew cold, and the market environment shifted. I realised that even a well-structured fund on paper could collapse under execution friction if you’re not prepared.
It would’ve been easy to quietly move on or re-enter the industry with a new identity. But instead, I chose to document everything — the structural oversights, the blind spots, the things no one told me until I had already paid the price to learn them. And I realised: these weren’t just my pain points. They were endemic to how we train and prepare financial professionals.
This reflection was the genesis of my current work in mentoring and training others entering the asset and fund management space. Rather than abstract case studies, I wanted to offer practical, lived insight — the kind of education I wish I had received at the start.
The individuals I now work with include aspiring fund managers, mid-career professionals, and compliance officers. They’re often bright, capable people who were never given the full picture of how fund structures work. We don’t sugar-coat it. We unpack it. Because the best fund managers I know aren’t just strategists — they’re systems thinkers.
There’s a reason fund closures aren’t discussed more openly. It’s not glamorous. It doesn’t fit the success narrative the industry loves. But if we want more resilient financial professionals — especially in Asia’s growing private markets — we need to start treating governance as a core skill, not a back-office function.
Talking openly about fund closures can also be deeply empowering. One of my proudest moments wasn’t launching a fund. It was hearing from someone I mentored who finally understood how fund structures worked — and landed a career-changing role because of it. That’s what responsible finance should look like. Less ego, more clarity. Less polish, more purpose.
We celebrate fund managers for raising capital and generating returns. We should also respect the ones who know when to pause, pivot, or exit — and do it on their own terms.
The next chapter of financial leadership will be written by those who bring humility, not just ambition, to the table. If we want to train future-ready fund professionals, we have to stop pretending structure is secondary. It’s not. It’s the foundation on which performance, reputation, and investor trust are built. And when that foundation weakens, it takes courage to pause and realign — not blind optimism.
We don’t need more bravado in finance. We need more honesty. More operational depth. More leaders willing to say: “Here’s where I got it wrong, and here’s what I’d do differently next time.”
Because that’s not failure. That’s leadership.
Mike Sim is the Founder of NGL Institute.
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Featured image: Singapore Stock Photos on Unsplash
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