We understand that there are lives, families and their hopes and dreams behind the numbers. We strive to partner with committees, companies and organizations who seek excellence for the benefit of their people and mission.
Institutional Investors
Knowledgeable. Independent. Focused.
Offering research-driven, innovative and unbiased investment advice.
Institutional investors are grappling with the reality of lower expected returns even as their spending needs increase. The way forward can be clouded by changeable markets, a proliferation of complex alternative financial instruments, and the constant presence of risk.
FiduciaryVest works with trustee-directed institutions to address these challenges. By gaining a clear understanding of your goals, we serve you best as an independent extension of your internal team, providing an added layer of fiduciary protection, focused thinking and seasoned investment management capabilities that are:
Knowledgeable
Our strong research and investment experience help non-profit institutions navigate the uncertain waters of investing. Our consultants bring innovative investment ideas that align with an organization’s stated mission and its balance sheet.
Sophisticated clients want access to alternative investments. We take pride in being able to keep things simple, to explain the benefits and risk of these investments in everyday language. We constantly challenge ourselves to “see around corners,” to identify areas of opportunity that our clients may not have previously considered.
Our approach to building policies, selecting investments and asset allocation strategies helps to fill gaps in an organization that may lack the inclination, expertise, time or confidence to make investment decisions.
Independent
As an employee-owned firm, we have no proprietary funds, allegiances to third parties or quarterly earnings’ responsibilities to shareholders that would otherwise compromise our ability to be fully objective to our clients. FiduciaryVest operates on a fee-only basis, so clients don’t have to worry whether we are being incentivized to make recommendations that are not in their best interest.
Focused
Your FiduciaryVest advisor’s goal is to make the complex simple: first, by listening closely to understand your thought processes, and then by recommending investment ideas that are aligned with your organization’s unique goals and objectives. Then, supported by our investment research group, we work side by side with you to design and implement custom processes that seek to optimize asset performance and streamline your decision-making, using both traditional and alternative asset classes.
Informed by a deep understanding of your financial goals, opportunities, and risks, we remain mindful of how you intend to use your assets. This focus allows us to maximize returns given your established risk parameters and time horizon.
We serve investment committees of non-profit organizations in the following capacities:
Foundations and Endowments
FiduciaryVest has a long history of advising a broad range of foundations and endowments, including charitable semi-public funds, community foundations, private foundations, healthcare foundations and school and university endowments.
In most cases, foundations and endowments are responsible for the stewardship of a perpetual asset, which creates a unique set of challenges. We find we can add the most value for our clients when we become an extension of their trustees, consulting with them in the following areas:
- Formulating spending policy
- Developing and managing investment policy
- Formulating the investment structure, including return targets, risk definition, risk capacity, risk tolerance and strategy-specific time horizons
- Conducting multi-factor scenario analysis and portfolio stress-testing
- Adding or replacing managers or custodians
- Monitoring adherence to investment policy guidelines and benchmarking performance to peers
Hospitals
FiduciaryVest has long advised hospital leadership on how to effectively manage their balance sheets by strategically aligning investment plans with capital structure and objectives.
We have a unique perspective on hospitals, grounded in deep frontline experience. Our investment approach for hospital balance sheets, developed by our well-rounded team of senior consultants, leverages the personal experience of one of our founders, who served in senior management positions as an administrator, controller and CEO of hospitals in the Southeast and Midwest.
In addition to modeling investment decisions, conducting stress tests and monitoring/benchmarking/replacing investment managers and custodians, as needed, we help hospital administrators with the following:
- Aligning investment design with debt structure, operating expectations, capital expenditure requirements and risk profile
- Partnering with trustee/finance committees on policy development and management, asset allocation and investment performance analysis
- Developing investment programs to support strategic planning
- Performing asset allocation modeling to reflect risk and return objectives of hospital leadership, and adapting it to reflect the variable/fixed structure of the hospital’s financing program
The Outsourced CIO
The ever-increasing complexity of the opportunity set, as well as volatility in the global capital markets, has caused many organizations to rethink their internal approach to portfolio management.
FiduciaryVest supports institutions who are seeking more sophisticated tools and resources, as well as more time-sensitive decision making, by offering discretionary portfolio management through our outsourced CIO offering (OCIO). The OCIO framework can be a cost-efficient and effective way to tailor FiduciaryVest’s sophisticated institutional investment management capabilities to your organization’s day-to-day operations.
Untethered by a quarterly investment committee meeting calendar, FiduciaryVest OCIO can make more timely portfolio decisions as market conditions warrant.
Ultimately, FiduciaryVest OCIO frees your internal staff to focus on their day-to-day responsibilities and allows our team to execute your investment strategy efficiently.
Retirement Plan Sponsors
Independent advice. Deep expertise.
Optimizing plan design and investments.
The retirement plan landscape continues to evolve, and plan sponsors must navigate the complex laws that were built to protect your employees, while keeping up with emerging best practices and increased litigation.
FiduciaryVest has focused on retirement plan consulting since 2005, and today serves the needs of both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans.
Defined Benefit Plans
FiduciaryVest offers customized investment advisory, risk management and asset-liability matching services to defined benefit and cash balance plans.
Today’s changing employee demographics and ultra-low interest rates have put unprecedented stresses on America’s traditional defined benefit plans. Those factors, combined with the expense of maintaining a pension plan, are causing many sponsors to re-examine exposures, lessen future obligations and contemplate possibly freezing or terminating their plans.
FiduciaryVest is well qualified to assist plan committees with these critical deliberations, and creating plan designs and processes that address the following potential challenges and risks, including:
- Providing comprehensive institutional investment advisory services
- Conducting asset-liability matching studies
- Designing liability-driven investment solutions
Cash Balance Plans
A cash balance plan is a form of defined benefit pension plan that has elements of a defined contribution plan. As in a traditional pension, investments in a cash balance plan are professionally managed. And like a 401(k), the participant is promised an account balance rather than a monthly income stream. FiduciaryVest has the flexibility to manage cash balance plan investments according to traditional safe-harbor crediting rates or market-based crediting rates.
Non-qualified Deferred Compensation Plans
Compensation plans are a critical element to attracting and retaining your most valuable employees. For highly compensated earners, qualified plans place an annual compensation limit for the purposes of making contributions to a plan. One option that can give you and your key employees greater flexibility is a non-qualified deferred compensation plan (NQDC plan). FiduciaryVest has experience implementing and evaluating non-qualified plans.
Defined Contribution Plans
FiduciaryVest serves as investment advisors and fiduciary consultants to retirement plans, including 401(k), 403(b) and other defined contribution plans. FiduciaryVest is committed to helping plan sponsors drive successful participant outcomes while serving as an independent extension of your internal team.
We help you fulfill your fiduciary responsibilities and provide investment advice that is:
Knowledgeable
Our process-driven approach includes creating and implementing well-documented protocols for sound governance and investment monitoring. Our consultants leverage their deep retirement plan experience to help sponsors optimize the investment menu, manage service providers and determine if fees are reasonable. These critical steps will help your employees and their beneficiaries, while minimizing your company’s fiduciary risk.
Independent
FiduciaryVest’s sole source of revenue comes from providing objective advice to our clients on a 100% fee-only basis. Unencumbered by any allegiances to a parent company or to third parties, we can offer clear-eyed assessments of the value your plan receives for fees charged by providers and investment managers.
We commit to our fiduciary status in writing, and are ready to shoulder and share your responsibilities as your ERISA 3(21) or 3(38) investment fiduciary.
Focused
FiduciaryVest consultants provide the depth, perspective and commitment to serve your plan and participants, giving you the time and attention you deserve. To bolster this conviction, every client works directly with a lead consultant at the firm.
Ultimately, we believe that your employees are far more likely to reach their retirement goals if the plan takes advantage of plan design automation to help them:
- Enroll in the plan
- Save more money
- Invest appropriately