OCIO Fundamentals

Choosing the right OCIO partner

OCIO stands for outsourced chief investment officer or, in plain English, outsourced investment management. The term refers to the full or partial outsourcing of your organization's investment function to a third party, like us. Your organization maintains control over the decisions that matter the most to you, such as strategic asset allocation, but the other fiduciary duties are handled by our robust team. Why should you consider OCIO? Here are the four reasons we think will matter the most to you.

For many asset owners, managing an institutional investment program is a sideline; it's important, but let's face it, your organization is likely not in the portfolio investment business, so does running your portfolio take time away from focusing on your mission? With the right OCIO provider, your portfolio is managed by experienced fiduciary professionals ones who understand how to use the best talent and technology to create tailored portfolios while managing your risk and helping to improve your governance. This focus on your best interests provides you with greater investment scale and that scale can mean more and better opportunities for your portfolio. On top of that, you can get access to top-tier research, reporting, implementation, and advice, and all this comes with a lower price tag by harnessing our significant scale. You can focus on your organization's goals while we focus on your portfolio.

How confident are you that your portfolio is moving as fast as the markets move? With the world-class OCIO provider, your portfolio benefits from active management and the ability to take advantage when markets present opportunities instead of waiting for quarterly updates. Our experts use sophisticated tools to constantly monitor your portfolio positioning every day around the clock; with more detailed knowledge of your holdings and risk exposures, we have the ability to dynamically adjust exposures in real-time, specifically for your organization. We ensure that your portfolio is updated optimized and nimble. Do your current investing resources match up with your total investment needs? It's not enough to build the right plan. You have to execute it as well. Risk needs to be managed every day. Our ocio team gives you access to the platform you would design and the team you would hire to execute your investment plan internally. If that was all you did because it is all that we do, your needs are what matter, so we'll work with you to create a holistic investment solution specifically aligned to your goals.

Combining an experienced team with our deep research capabilities, we're able to analyze and rate thousands of investment managers and opportunities across both private and public markets to assemble the best specialized options for your portfolio and organization, and we fine-tune our approach all day long, every day for you. Is it possible to get better performance, lower risk, and do so with lower costs using our open architecture solution? The right OCIO provider should help you expand your investment opportunities in private and public markets, improve your portfolio alignment for issues like ESG, and give you access to powerful tools like overlays and transition management, all for a more competitive rate than it would cost to do it on your own. It makes sense in this business. Scale matters, that means we can help negotiate for lower overall costs across managers and pool your assets with other organizations.

At Russell Investments, OCIO is what we do; not a side business. Your focus should be on your organizational mission. Our focus will always be on your best interests.