U.S. Outsourced Chief Investment Officer Function 2021
Revisiting Performance Track Records
Fees, Market Sizing, and Report Standardization
- Take a deep dive into factors driving replacement searches
- Learn about updates on developing industry best practices for performance reporting, fee structures, and communications
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Summary
Explore the evolving outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) market, including market sizing, demand and anticipated growth across client segments, types of outsourcing arrangements, functions outsourced, obstacles to uniformity across provider (i.e., performance track record and fees), and reasons why institutions are outsourcing. The report also examines OCIO providers, industry consolidation, and distribution strategies used by asset managers building relationships with OCIO providers.
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A Note from the Author
More Nonprofits Seek OCIO Services

Laura Levesque, CFA
Director
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Laura Levesque, CFA
Director
Laura has over 15 years of institutional investment management industry experience. She is a member of the Institutional practice, where she leads research for two annual reports. Her focuses are institutional investment solutions including OCIO, and sales and services models. Her experience and knowledge of the institutional asset management space provide a directional framework to ongoing consulting projects. She also regularly contributes to The Cerulli Edge series.
Prior to joining Cerulli Associates, Laura held equity research, product, and analytics roles at Columbia Threadneedle and MFS Investment Management. She is a CFA charterholder and member of the CFA Society Boston.
Full biography here.
Nonprofits are increasingly seeking the services of outsourced chief investment officers (OCIOs) and are expected to contribute robust growth to the market for the next five5 years. 72% of OCIO providers expect most of that growth to come from clients with assets under management (AUM) between $101 million and $500 million.,
Despite strong returns and an increase in donations during the pandemic, nonprofits have experienced strained operating models, which is driving their interest in the OCIO service models. OCIO providers that have traditionally serviced defined benefit (DB) or defined contribution (DC) plans will likely need to develop or acquire new capabilities to specifically service the unique requirements of this segment of the market. They should be prepared to:
- Evaluate and possibly enhance private investment benches
- Prepare to service more complex environmental, social, and governance (ESG) services
- Devote more resources to educate committee members on the OCIO relationship to best service the AUM
Learn more about the evolving OCIO landscape, including market sizing, forces of growth, fee arrangements, performance reporting, and demand and needs across client segments, with Cerulli’s latest research, U.S. Outsourced Chief Investment Officer Function 2021: Revisiting Performance Track Records.
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