Taking on the challenges of running an advisory business today is a tall order. Advisors must continually find ways to optimize their time, streamline their business and deliver increasingly personalized experiences to their clients.
It comes down to intelligently and thoughtfully outsourcing the aspects of the business that can be handled by specialists.
That means finding portfolio management professionals with the right tools and expertise to handle portfolio construction, implementation, and monitoring. Finding trading teams with the right technology and industry depth. Finding technology providers with a fully integrated platform that’s built for scalability and growth.
It means partnering with an OCIO. An OCIO partner can help you optimize your business from every angle.
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8 Things You Can Do When You Partner with an OCIO
1. Save money.
The costs of using an OCIO can often be offset by the operational efficiencies created by using one. An OCIO offers a team of seasoned experts and systems that may cost less than hiring, training, and implementing in-house resources.
An OCIO provider already has the systems and teams in place to manage investment portfolios more efficiently. Plus, it’s their only job, as opposed to in-house staff that might be tasked with other functions.
In fact, one survey reports that more than half of advisors who currently outsource their investment management report their operating costs have declined since they began outsourcing, with 40% seeing declines in costs of 5% or more.¹
Potential Client Benefit: Leveraging an OCIO means getting access to institutional pricing, giving you the potential for clients to experience lower investment fees.
2. Lean on the experts.
An OCIO delivers the experience and scale of professional money managers, including a proven investment approach, market research, due diligence, CFAs and other investment specialists, portfolio optimization technology, integrated reporting and compliance tools to you and your clients.
Potential Client Benefit: 90% of investors agree that financial advisors should leverage external experts to help with research, strategy, investment planning and management, according to a 2021 Orion survey.²
3. Offer specialized services.
To keep pace with the evolving nature of the industry, you need solutions and services that can be personalized to meet their needs. An OCIO enables you to offer more nuanced solutions to your clients, such as:
- Direct indexing
- Cashiering and money management
- Tax harvesting and optimization overlays
An OCIO can help you increase the value you deliver to clients by expanding your offering to include strategies that can be customized for a client’s investment preferences, tax considerations or other special circumstances. These capabilities can help you differentiate your value proposition and stand out from your competition.
4. Sit on the same side of the table with your clients.
Using an OCIO for investment management helps you stay aligned with your clients, which can be especially helpful during times of market uncertainty. An OCIO will partner with you to address client concerns, provide perspective and help keep you and your clients fully informed.
In addition, while you may have built your business on building client portfolios, the depth and breadth of resources of an OCIO — a time-tested investment approach, deep manager research and due diligence, access to specialists and CFAs, portfolio rebalancing and optimization technology — can provide added peace of mind for clients.
Potential Client Benefit: Most clients will understand the value that you are delivering through professional money management. And in the event that markets are down and their portfolio is underperforming, they may be less likely to question your expertise and view you unfavorably.
5. Expand your high-net-worth business.
Serving affluent investors means offering personalized investment strategies and services, which can be challenging to do at scale. An OCIO provider can help you effectively offer high net worth experiences and assist with client meetings and implementation of those solutions. That might include direct indexing strategies, charitable initiatives, estate and legacy planning considerations, proactive tax management, or other investment solutions to meet specific needs of high-net-worth investors.
6. Spend more time focused on business development.
One of the key differentiating factors between top advisors and other advisors is how they manage their time. According to Kitces, the average independent financial advisor only spends about 9 hours a week on business development.³
Partnering with an OCIO can free up hours normally spent on back office and investment management tasks that could now be focused on the areas that impact your business. One study found that financial advisors who outsource gain nearly 8 hours a week and can use that time to focus on clients.⁴ With that additional time to focus on relationships and service, advisors can deliver better client experiences.
7. Supercharge your growth.
Achieving scalable, sustainable growth means striking a balance between new business opportunities and your ability to deliver the best experiences for your existing clients. Partnering with an OCIO can take the investment functions like trading, model management and portfolio oversight — particularly those that are manual and not fully automated — off your plate and into the hands of experts who focus entirely on those things.
Leveraging the expertise of an OCIO creates capacity in your business that you can fill with growth. Where you were once maxed out on capacity, you now have breathing room and the time you need to grow your business in the areas that you want to focus on. OCIOs will work with you to help you tackle your biggest growth challenges.
8. Simplify your business.
One of the biggest challenges RIAs face is running a business. Cerulli cites that 24% of RIAs listed time required to run a business as a major challenge.⁵ Whether you’re a small, mid-size, or large RIA, you need the right resources — systems, tools, personnel, partners — to be able to deliver better experiences to your clients.
The right OCIO partner offers a comprehensive list of services that you can customize to meet the needs of your business. Whether you take advantage of the entire suite of services or choose from a menu, you’ll still reap the benefits of simplifying your practice by streamlining your processes and increasing the productivity of your staff.
What 8 Things Could You Do if You Had the Right OCIO Partner?
Orion research shows that:
- 80% of advisors want better client-facing tech, a stronger investment team, and inside access to fund managers to meet client expectations.²
- 89% of advisors believe they need to provide extensive due diligence, research, and other high-touch services to support their high-net-worth clients.²
- Almost 50% of advisors worry they don’t have enough horsepower to meet the needs of large AUM clients.²
Grow and scale your business with a complete suite of investment and operational services that you can customize to meet your needs with help from Orion OCIO — so you can do eight of your own great things.
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Growth, supercharged. Take back time in your day and get the horsepower and team to win more — and bigger — business, faster with Orion OCIO.
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