Investment consultants play an increasingly active role in directing investment decisions for institutional pension plans. As their role expands, many consultants are moving beyond passive investment recommendations to provide active discretion and control over plan assets. For example, many consultants are:
- Making discretionary choices of which investment managers a plan will use,
- Actively re-allocating funds between asset classes and managers, and
- Directly managing plan assets by investing in private assets, proprietary indexes and investment funds.
Such an expanded role can lead to an increased need to monitor the consultant in order to appropriately judge their performance and manage potential conflicts of interest. Opus assists clients in addressing these needs by:
- Establishing appropriate benchmarks for the plan and consultant,
- Reviewing periodic performance of the consultant,
- Performing independent analyses of consultant assertions,
- Tracking changes to the resources, operations and stability of the consultant, and
- Advising regarding hiring, termination or changing the scope of consultant work.
In doing so, Opus works closely with its clients to establish and implement appropriate monitoring programs.