NEPC’s Chief Investment Officer, Tim McCusker, is quoted in Institutional Investor’s coverage of how experienced asset managers are adapting strategies and exploring ETFs. Read the full article on Institutional Investor’s website or read excerpts below.
Just as asset managers are moving to more user-friendly vehicles like ETFs, investment consulting firms like Cliffwater are pivoting to the retail and wealth space with an eye toward private assets.
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The other options consultants are taking to evolve in the current environment are to either go the OCIO route or partner with an established wealth manager — which NEPC did when it merged with Hightower last year.
“The institutional world has been under a lot of pressure for over a decade, and not just investment consulting,” NEPC’s chief investment officer Tim McCusker told II in September. “Everything except private markets has had a really tough time. And so those businesses, all different kinds, are looking for ways to grow.”
For NEPC, the main engine of growth for the last 10 years has been OCIO, going from zero 13 years ago to accounting for 30 percent of its revenue now. “And that will continue to grow for us,” McCusker said.
According to the NEPC investment chief, the institutional world has reached a plateau, where allocators have established their private market allocations, leaving only replacement growth. So, with long-term targets set in the institutional world, McCusker said that many advisors and managers are seeing the wealth market as “a place where we can serve and bring our advice.”
“I think the wealth market will be much better served having that than having advisors trying to advise their clients and do research at the same time,” McCusker added.
“Everyone in the space is looking at the wealth market and saying, ‘This is a place where we can serve and bring our advice.’”
Click here to read the full article on the Institutional Investor site.