Outsourced
Chief Investment
Officer (OCIO)
Partnering with an OCIO firm can help institutional investors address the many challenges and constraints they face in today's increasingly complex environment.
How can investment management outsourcing help you?
OCIO helps you optimize your investment program.
Deepen your resources.
Outsourcing your investments will add depth and continuity, allowing you to focus on the decisions most critical to your organization.
Respond more rapidly in a crisis.
An OCIO partnership ensures your portfolio is monitored around the clock and can respond rapidly in a crisis.
Lower your investment costs.
An OCIO provider can use their scale, leveraging in-house capabilities at cost and negotiating more competitive sub-manager rates.
Improve access to the best ideas.
The right partner can significantly broaden the range of investable opportunities, robustly assessing and accessing a deeper pool of possibilities.
Key aspects of our outsourced CIO approach
Our role: helping you achieve your investment goals. Period.
Uniquely
yours.
We don't take a cookie-cutter approach with your investment program. We take the time to understand you, your challenges, and your beliefs so we can provide a tailored solution that meets your needs.
In a recent study, our clients ranked our understanding and alignment with their unique investment goals ahead of any other firm surveyed. 1
Industry
expertise.
This isn't our first rodeo. Your dedicated team will include seasoned professionals who have helped organizations like yours achieve their investment goals. They'll hit the ground running with a deep understanding of the investment challenges faced by your industry.
Our investment professionals have an average of 19 years industry experience with specialist CIO outsourcing expertise in DB, DC, non-profit and healthcare.
Global
access.
A world of opportunities, brought to your door. Our globally-connected network of investment professionals searches for the best investments and puts them to work for you. Every specialist integrates with our global investment platform, drawing on sophisticated modeling tools and years of research and expertise.
Today, our global platform is substantial, managing more than C$374.6 billion —and guiding C$1.3 trillion 2—in assets on behalf of investors all around the world.
We're here to help.
If you're considering an outsourced CIO, we can help you find the right approach for you.
No obligation. Let's talk.
Request a call backChoosing the right OCIO partner
OCIO, stands for Outsourced Chief Investment Officer. Or in plain English, Outsource Investment Management. Choosing a strategic partner to handle the full or partial outsourcing of your organization's investment function is a big decision. Here are four questions you should consider before you sign on the dotted line.
The right partner gives you as much control as you want, and removes as much of the burden as you need. In most cases, the key decisions like your long term goals, and your strategic asset allocation remain with you. But manager selection, and day to day risk management, are taken off your plate.
At Russell Investments, we know that every client is unique. Our goal is to literally function as an extension of your business. That's why each client gets a dedicated CIO, a dedicated COO, and a dedicated portfolio manager. This means we can help you with your strategy, handle your back office and reporting operations, and manage risk in your portfolio. Being dynamic when market conditions provide compelling opportunities.
And you? Well, you can keep the control you want, and sleep a little better at night, knowing your Russell Investments team has got your back. Where do your CIO providers interests lie? With you or somewhere else? Make sure you're working with a provider that is fundamentally focused on OCIO. At Russell Investments, OCIO represents 60% of our total firm revenue, and nearly all of our institutional revenue. And that's where we spend our time and talent.
For some of our large key competitors, that OCIO revenue number, may drop as low as 2%. Ask them, if is only 2% of their business, what is their real motivation for working with you? Experience. We've seen some big firms enter the OCIO arena very recently. But just because they're big, doesn't mean they have experience specifically in OCIO.
At Russell Investments, we have over five decades of OCIO experience. And OCIO, has always been our core focus. That means we've helped clients succeed through nearly every imaginable market cycle. Our average client tenure is among the very longest in the industry. And our platform and technology represent years of iterative innovation, driven by addressing the exact problems faced by institutional investors like you. We have a saying at Russell Investments, "some do some, but few do all." We believe, you need a provider who is best in class, in all.
Russell gives you access to both public and private markets through the best managers available. Who can manage your portfolio holistically. We not only design your strategy, but we implement it on a daily basis with top tier, overlay trading, and transition management capabilities. Developing a strategy is just not enough. The right OCIO provider needs to make it work every day. That also means the best back office support. This commitment to successful outcomes and service, may be why at Russell. We have some of the highest client satisfaction scores in the industry.
At Russell Investments, our focus is on your success. It's about allowing you to focus on your organizational mission, while we focus on your investments. Our dedication to OCIO, means that our mission is to help you achieve your objectives. Our commitment to you is fundamental to us, because we are fundamentally OCIO.
What sets our investment outsourcing approach apart?
Fundamentally OCIO.
OCIO is what we do. The core focus of our global institutional investment business. We have been honing our craft for more than 40 years, a level of commitment unmatched by any other organization. Every capability we have developed was solely designed to help our clients, people like you, reach their goals.
Who we help
Locally, we provide CIO outsourcing services to organizations of all sizes, specializing in four key areas.
Our expertise and experience help defined benefit plan sponsors and their pension plans tackle funding and volatility issues, pension risk transfer strategies, and more – always linking the investment strategy to the organizational goals.
See how delegated investment solutions are designed to help union plans effectively pursue plan objectives.
We help non-profits support their mission by providing strategic investment advice, governance, implementation, and administration—all to achieve and maintain spending goals.
Customized solutions for corporations designed to complement your in-house capabilities.
Related resources
If you're just learning what OCIO is all about, we have the fundamentals of outsourcing CIO to help broaden your understanding.
Review practical considerations of the OCIO fiduciary duty, the co-fiduciary role, and evaluation. We also include a "who does what" worksheet.
Ensure you ask the right questions when searching for the ideal partner. Find best practices for OCIO RFPs and a list of commonly-asked questions from real RFPs to weigh your options.
WHAT'S NEXT
We'd love to talk.
Please reach out to me directly through this form.
Tom Lappalainen, CFA
Director,
Client Portfolio Management
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All data as of March 31, 2022 unless otherwise stated.
1 In a 2019 study conducted by Chatham Partners, Russell Investments significantly outperformed peers in multiple client service metrics. Firms included in the Chatham proprietary investment management benchmark: AllianzGI, Blackrock, BNY Mellon, Bridgewater Associates, Capital Guardian/ Capital Research, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Dodge & Cox, Goldman Sachs, GMO, J.P. Morgan, Loomis Sayles & Company, MFS Investment Management, Neuberger Berman, NTGI, Parametric, PIMCO, State Street, T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, Wellington, and Wells Capital Mgmt.
2 As of June 30, 2022.
3 Source: Pensions & Investments, “Special report: CIO Outsourcing - Investment outsourcing 2022”, Issue date: July 4, 2022. Available at: https://www.pionline.com/OCIO2022. Russell Investments was globally ranked 7th among leading institutional OCIO managers based on outsourced assets under management (AUM) from 55 firms in the July 2022 Pensions & Investments' annual survey of OCIO managers. Our OCIO solutions have $175.9 billion in institutional outsourced AUM (as of March 31, 2022) around the globe. Pensions & Investments delivers news, research, and analysis to the institutional investment market.