What is the AIMA DDQ?

The AIMA DDQ is built from modules that a manager combines into a template for each fund, answers once and then reuses across investors. The current edition dates from 2025, and investors treat the answers as an early step in their checks, not the last.

Who publishes the AIMA DDQ and why

The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the industry association for alternative investment managers, publishes the AIMA due diligence questionnaire. According to AIMA's page on its due diligence questionnaires, the first edition appeared in 1997 for investors carrying out due diligence on hedge fund managers. It was a response to investors who had asked for a standard set of questions. A hedge fund, in plain terms, is a pooled investment fund whose manager can use a wider range of strategies than a conventional fund, such as short selling and borrowing to invest.

The template is a DDQ with a shared question set, and that standardisation serves both sides. Investors who receive answers from several managers can compare them like for like. Managers, by AIMA's account, favour standard questions because they cut the work of answering and let a manager give every investor the same information.

Without a shared template, each investor's own question list would mean rewriting much the same answers again and again. With it, the manager's investor relations or RFP team keeps one answer set per firm and fund, and that set serves each investor who asks.

How the AIMA DDQ is built and which edition is current

The 2025 edition is the current AIMA DDQ, and it keeps the modular approach AIMA first adopted in 2017, as AIMA's announcement of that edition explains. A manager of open-end funds starts from the Basic Open-End Setup, then adds or replaces modules to fit the fund. A manager of closed-end funds starts the same way from the Basic Closed-End Setup. The finished template holds the questions that apply to that fund, rather than one long form for every kind of manager.

That edition arrived in two stages. AIMA released it in March 2025 as a soft launch and said it would refine the modules after feedback from its members. It also said it would publish a final 2025 edition of each module and template before the end of that year.

The final edition followed on a page AIMA dated 16 November 2025. Alongside it, AIMA published blacklines of each template against the March soft launch text, showing the specific changes made. A manager's team that built its answers on a March 2025 template can use those blacklines to see which questions moved, changed or were added before it updates its answer set.

Where the AIMA DDQ sits in an investor's due diligence

Prospective investors use the AIMA DDQ when they assess an investment manager, and AIMA describes it as the industry-standard template for that purpose. It is an early step in the investor's due diligence, not the last one, according to AIMA's guidance on its DDQs. Investors read the answers to set their follow-up questions and check them against other sources.

One of those checks is often operational due diligence: the investor's review of how the manager runs the business behind the fund, including its operations, controls and service providers. Because the investor cross-checks what it reads, each answer is a position the manager can expect to defend in later meetings and document reviews.

For the manager's team, the AIMA DDQ sits apart from an RFP, including an asset management RFP issued for a mandate. The same facts about the firm and its funds feed both, but the DDQ answers the investor's checks rather than a proposal for the mandate.

An illustrative example of answering an AIMA DDQ

The following example is illustrative, not a real case. A hedge fund manager runs an open-end fund, and a pension fund considering an allocation asks it for a completed AIMA DDQ. The manager's investor relations team owns the response and starts by choosing the template.

AIMA's decision tree handles that choice. The team answers its 3 to 5 short questions, and the tree recommends templates with the modules already combined. For this fund, the starting point is the Basic Open-End Setup, with the recommended modules added.

The team answered the 2019 edition of the questionnaire last year, so most of its answers exist but sit in the old structure. AIMA's transition guidance provides a concordance that shows where each 2019 question went in the 2025 edition, along with a short video on moving answers across. Using the concordance, the team moves each existing answer to its new place.

Questions new to the 2025 edition have no earlier answer to carry across. The team sends them to the colleagues who hold the facts. In this example, operations takes the questions on fund administration and service providers, compliance takes those on policies and controls, and the portfolio managers take those on strategy and risk.

Carried-over answers get the same scrutiny, because a year-old answer may no longer match the firm. The team updates any changed service provider or revised policy before the set goes out. Once every answer is current, the owner of the response approves the set, and the team sends it to the pension fund. It then keeps that answer set current as the firm and fund change. Running such a response across several contributors is covered in DDQ response.

How the AIMA DDQ differs from other DDQs

Two other questionnaires share the DDQ name and are easily confused with the AIMA DDQ.

The ILPA DDQ

The Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) publishes its own DDQ, which, as ILPA states, exists to standardise the main areas investors ask about when they assess managers. Its purpose is close to the AIMA DDQ's, but its starting point differs. ILPA says its DDQ, as written, best fits established private equity managers, and it is developing modules for other asset classes, such as private credit. The AIMA DDQ, by contrast, began with hedge fund managers and is assembled from modules to fit each fund.

A bank's supplier DDQ

A bank's supplier DDQ runs in the other direction. There, the bank is the buyer, assessing a supplier such as a technology or services provider, and the supplier answers questions about its security, finances and controls. The questions follow that direction. A supplier DDQ tests whether the bank can rely on a supplier to deliver a service, while the AIMA DDQ tests whether an investor can trust a manager with its capital. Supplier due diligence covers that questionnaire in detail.