Brendan Powers, CFA

Director, Product Development

Team page brendan powers

About Brendan

Brendan is co-head of Cerulli’s Product Development and Institutional practices.

The Product Development practice focuses on trends related to asset managers’ product strategy, development, and management functions. This broadly includes assessing the opportunity for product line expansion, evaluating emerging product trends, assessing optimal pricing strategy, and understanding distribution and product positioning for investment products across retail and institutional channels.

The Institutional practice specializes in research and consulting related to institutional asset owners, including defined benefit plans, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, and healthcare organizations as well as third-party allocators including consultants and outsourced chief investment officers (OCIOs).

As the co-head of Cerulli’s Product Development and Institutional practices, Brendan helps lead two teams of analysts dedicated to developing data and insights to support Cerulli’s published research and consulting business. In his role, Brendan is also responsible for leading various strategic consulting engagements, focusing on key areas including growth strategies, market entry strategies, product offering analyses, pricing optimization, and distribution strategies.

Prior to joining Cerulli, Brendan worked as a Senior Client Associate at Eaton Vance Management, focusing primarily on the firm’s exchange funds.

Education

  • Trinity College
    Bachelor of Science in Economics

Honors and Awards

  • Quoted frequently in industry-leading publications as a subject matter expert on asset management trends (FundFire, Ignites, Financial Times, Fund Intelligence)
  • Regular presenter and panelist at industry conferences and events
  • Money Management Institute’s Leadership Pathway program - Class of 2018

Areas of Expertise

  • The addressable market sizing of professionally managed assets in the U.S., across all retail and institutional client channels
  • Vehicle (e.g., mutual fund, ETF, SMA, CIT) and asset class (e.g., public equity, public fixed income, private markets) use across U.S. client segments
  • Financial advisor portfolio construction trends, use of investment products and strategies, and asset manager relationship best practices
  • The asset allocation model portfolio landscape, including key product development initiatives, advisor adoption and use, marketplaces, and distribution strategies
  • The U.S. subadvisory market and the relationships between subadvisors and sponsors across all components of the subadvisory ecosystem

Recent Project Work

  • Market entry/expansion strategy for U.S. and international asset management firms considering growth opportunities in the U.S. marketplace
  • Custom investor segmentation analysis to understand buying behavior and product use
  • Pricing analysis of investment products/strategies to benchmark vs. peers and determine investor appetite
  • Wealth manager managed account platform capabilities benchmarking and pricing optimization
  • Data-driven white papers on a variety of topics, including index-based product use within retail wealth management, domicile selection process for private markets managers, direct indexing and tax-managed solutions, and private markets in retirement

Learn More about the U.S. Product Development Practice

Cerulli’s U.S. Product Development practice explores demand, distribution, and innovation across packaged vehicles to provide the insights needed for continuous expansion.

Learn More

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