(Bloomberg) -- Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management has changed its terms to ensure that clients always pay a minimum fee, even if the hedge fund loses money.   

They will now pay annual fees of about 1% of assets or 20% of investment gains — whichever is greater, according to a client letter seen by Bloomberg. It’s part of an effort to “reflect current industry-standard approaches” adopted by other multi-strategy peers, Millennium said in the Feb. 21 letter. Citadel, for example, has a similar fee structure.

The change means that if Millennium loses money or generates an annual return of less than 5%, it’s still guaranteed fees equal to about 1% of client assets, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Since its founding in 1990, Millennium has only returned less than 5% in two years: 2008 and 2016. 

Millennium, like most of its competitors, also passes along to clients expenses that include portfolio-manager compensation and legal and accounting costs. 

A spokesman for the New York-based firm, with $58 billion of assets under management at the end of February, declined to comment. 

The new terms align with Millennium’s broader push to create a stable business that’s unencumbered by frequent redemptions or big reductions in annual income. The firm recently completed a plan to lock up client capital for longer, extending the full redemption period to five years from one. Its executives view reliable capital as a key tool to attract and retain talent and invest in technology and infrastructure, among other things.  

Read more: Millennium Returns $15 Billion, Cementing Move to Long-Term Cash

If Millennium does end up charging 1% of assets, the fund will have to recover what clients paid before levying a performance fee the following year, according to the letter. The fee changes will take effect on or around July 1. 

Millennium also removed a so-called key man clause that allowed some investors to redeem if Englander, 74, had left the firm or was no longer able to run it.

--With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan.

(Updates with Citadel in second paragraph.)

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