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 to an OCIO provider will give you access to more resources and expertise, allowing you to focus on the decisions most critical to your organization.

Respond more rapidly in a crisis.

An OCIO partnership ensures your investment portfolio is monitored around the clock and can respond rapidly in a crisis helping manage your risk.

Lower your investment costs.

OCIOs 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 provide investment advice to help you explore and access a wider range of investment opportunities.

Key aspects of our outsourced CIO approach

Our role: helping you achieve your investment goals. Period.

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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

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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.

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Global
access.

A world of opportunities brought to your door. Our globally-connected network of investment pros 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.

 

Our global platform manages over $276.5 billion in assets and guides $1.0 trillion²—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 back

Choosing 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.

Public & private mastery

There is a world of opportunities well beyond those listed on public markets. Unlike other firms, we bring a mastery across both public and private assets leveraging our strategic partnerships and capabilities to ensure you have full access. As well as the technology to see how it all comes together with aggregated exposures and risks.

Team synergy

Any investment program is fundamentally a team effort. More important than the team's size is the team's cohesion, the investment experience, and the experience of working together. Our investment professionals bring 19+ years in the industry and average more than a decade working together.

Total portfolio intelligence

Knowing your exposure is the critical first step in any crisis. Yet, many competitors fall at the first hurdle, struggling to aggregate positions from multiple underlying managers. In contrast, we know how you are positioned, and so will you with complete transparency across your entire investment portfolio, from strategy-level to security-level, and with the capability to respond in real-time.

$1.0t

assets under advice 2

$276b

assets under management

1980

when our journey began outsourcing CIO

#7

global OCIO
ranking by assets3

Russell Investments has been globally recognized for excellence in the investment industry.

We have a proven track record in investment implementation, with scale, client satisfaction, innovative solutions and more than 35 years of experience.

CIO 2023 OCIO Survey A Top Global Outsourcer

A Top Global Manager of outsourced assets

For the 12th year in a row, Russell Investments was ranked as a top global manager of institutional outsourced assets in CIO Magazine's "Outsourced Chief Investments Officer (OCIO) Survey," based on the AUM from its fully discretionary clients (as of 12/31/2022). Notably, in CIO's "2023 OCIO Survey" which included 47 firms, Russell Investments placed first among the global managers in Healthcare and in the top 10 for Defined Benefit and 401(k), 403(b) or other DC outsourced assets.

Who we help

Locally, we provide CIO outsourcing services to organizations of all sizes, specializing in four key areas.

Federal or municipal building icon

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.

We help defined contribution plans with their fiduciary responsibilities to employ best practices in plan design, investments, and implementation – because we understand the savings of real individuals is at stake.

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We help non-profits support their mission by providing strategic investment advice, governance, implementation, and administration—all to achieve and maintain spending goals.

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Our specialists understand the unique challenges hospitals and healthcare systems face when managing long-term and operating pools; pensions and retirement savings plans; foundation and insurance assets.

Related resources

OCIO fundamentals

If you're just learning what OCIO is all about, we have the fundamentals of outsourcing CIO to help broaden your understanding.

Some do some, few do all

In our view, the importance of finding an OCIO provider that does it all, make better partners. Even if you're partially outsourcing. This article explains why.

RFP Builder

Ensure you ask the right questions when searching for the ideal partner. Find best practices for OCIO RFPs, a list of commonly-asked questions from real RFPs, and a scoring matrix worksheet to weigh your options.

LATEST BLOG POSTS

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What's next

We'd love to talk.

Lisa Schneider

Please reach out to me directly through this form.

Lisa Schneider, CFA

Managing Director,
Head of Client Solutions

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Please remember that all investments carry some level of risk, including the potential loss of principal invested. They do not typically grow at an even rate of return and may experience negative growth. As with any type of portfolio structuring, attempting to reduce risk and increase return could, at certain times, unintentionally reduce returns.

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.