Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO)

Helping you balance short-term demands with long-term objectives

An OCIO relationship to help you create lasting success

When serving as your outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO), our investment process begins with your organization. First, we spend time understanding your institution’s unique circumstances – including your mission, funding considerations, and spending needs – priorities, and short- and long-term risk and return goals. Then, we design an investment plan that seeks to meet your spending needs and preserve your portfolio’s long-term purchasing power.

Our approach to investing for endowments and foundations combines our focus on partnering with the world’s best investment managers across asset classes to help clients preserve and grow capital. We augment our investment offering with comprehensive OCIO solutions to enhance the management and operations of your institution so you can succeed.

We invest alongside clients and manage their investments as if they were their own. This creates a unique investment culture and distinct alignment of interests with our clients. As an investor who has stewarded our own institution for over 200 years, our unique perspective can help you achieve your goals over long time horizons.

Setting an Asset Allocation for Endowments and Foundations

BBH Partner Suzanne Brenner and Deputy Chief Investment Officer Ilene Spitzer discuss special considerations to take into account when setting an asset allocation for endowments and foundations.

OCIO solutions to help endowments and foundations achieve their mission

  • Investment Advisory

    Partnership with the world’s best investment managers who are focused on preserving and growing institutional capital

  • Spending Rate Analysis

    Guidance establishing the appropriate spending policy for your organization

  • Investment Policy Statement

    Advice on the creation or review of your investment policy statement

  • Administration Services

    Trustee services that provide continuity while easing administrative burdens

  • Strategy, Operating, and Fundraising Advisory

    Objective advice to help you achieve your organization’s mission and goals

  • Lending

    Flexible, secured lending to help you implement strategies to achieve your objectives1

How we construct endowment and foundation portfolios as your OCIO

It is our job as your OCIO to build a portfolio to achieve your long-term goals and mission. Our portfolios for endowments and foundations combine our deep experience partnering with those we believe are the world’s best investment managers with our unwavering focus on helping institutions preserve and grow capital. The driving principles behind the portfolio are as follows:

 
Equity Bias
Adequate Liquidity
Prudent Leverage
Risk ManagementActive Rebalancing
We view an equity bias as necessary to ensure spending needs can be met on an annual basis while preserving the portfolio’s purchasing power.
We believe endowment and foundation portfolios must have adequate liquidity to ensure spending needs can be met.
We do not believe that leverage is necessary to generate strong long-term returns; when used, we believe it should be modest.We believe strategies and assets that bear less correlation to the wider markets or behave in a countercyclical manner can add practical value to endowment and foundation portfolios.
We believe that tax-exempt portfolios should be rebalanced to model when actual allocations are outside of target ranges.

Investing for Forever: Considerations When Investing for Endowments and Foundations

We discuss factors that come into play when investing for endowments and foundations.

What Endowments & Foundations Should Know About Spending Rates

In this video, BBH Chief Investment Strategist Scott Clemons discusses current market dynamics, explains how to calculate your organization’s unique spending rate, and provides tangible solutions to organizations grappling with these issues.

BBH Partners and senior executives have deep experience creating financial solutions for tax-exempt organizations and acting in a fiduciary capacity as nonprofit board members, enabling us to best serve our endowment and foundation clients as their OCIO.”



The BBH OCIO difference

 

  • Investment office for hire: We are the closest firm to building out your own internal office, providing discretionary investment management, banking, lending, philanthropic advice, custody, and reporting services. We are a complete replication of the structure utilized by the largest and most successful endowments in the world. For endowments and foundations that choose not to amortize the cost of a fully built out internal team, we fill that void.
  • Extension of staff: We do not replace your team – we enhance it. We operate to make it feel like we are sitting on campus or in your foundation’s offices.
  • Expertise: We have been serving as an OCIO for more than 90 years. Our investment team is led by three former endowment and foundation office alumni. 

1 Borrowed funds cannot be used to purchase securities in the portfolio.

This communication is for informational purposes only.  The information herein has not been based on a consideration of any individual investor’s circumstances and is not investment advice, nor should it be construed in any way as tax, accounting, legal or regulatory advice.  Individuals should consult their personal tax, accounting and legal advisers regarding any potential investment or strategy.  Any views and opinions are subject to change at any time.

This material does not constitute an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where or to any person to whom it would be unauthorized to do so.

Investment Advisory Products and Services:

NOT FDIC INSURED   NO BANK GUARANTEE    MAY LOSE VALUE

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