Investment advice and solutions for non-profit organizations

You should carefully review your objectives and beliefs and assess whether they have been changed and how they can be documented. Below are some questions to help guide your review: 

• What is your timeframe for investment?
• What return do you need?
• How much do you plan to spend?
• At what point does a market drawdown impact your ability to meet your spending requirements?
• What are your sustainability goals?
• What positive impacts do you want your investments to have?
• Who are your stakeholders and what do they need? For example, is reporting required?

It's important to align your investment strategy with your objectives and beliefs. You should consider having a broad opportunity set available across the full range of asset classes. Traditional asset classes, such as public equities, bonds and real estate, may not deliver the same returns in the future.

Consider how your strategy helps you achieve these goals and assess options if your current strategy doesn't help you achieve them. What strategic asset allocation helps you get the sustainable return you need, allows you to spend at the rate you need and fits with your risk appetite? How can you ensure your investments make a positive impact and are sustainable?

Once your objectives and strategy have been defined, you will need to source and allocate to quality asset managers that are best placed to deliver value for money and help you achieve your goals. Put a pro active review process in place so that these components can be changed when needed.

• Are your asset managers serving you well?
• What do you want to discuss or decide at the board/committee/management team level? 
• Are there other ways to invest that may allow you more time to focus on your core mission? 
• Do you want more control over the types of companies to which your portfolio has exposure?
• Do you have a team in place that has expertise to make investment decisions or does that sit with the board or a committee, do they have the necessary investment expertise?

We can help you improve the probability of achieving a better investment return by focusing on three key areas which are critical for any investment strategy.

1. Portfolio mix: We can help you review your strategic asset allocation and integrate alternative asset classes such as private market opportunities that are designed to deliver strong returns.
2. Improved governance: We can help you define and develop a strong governance structure that is designed to help you make better-informed decisions and implement them efficiently.
3. Managing costs: Costs can significantly impact outcomes and are a critical factor. We can leverage our scale to try and help you reduce both your explicit and implicit costs.

Implementation services, sometimes referred to as OCIO or fiduciary management, provide you with the expertise of a specialized investment firm and are designed to help you manage your investments. You can use the services to help you make and execute investment decisions on key topics such as asset allocation and asset manager selection or you can enable them to make decisions on your behalf.

We have extensive implementation experience and can execute investment decisions quickly, efficiently and in a risk-controlled manner on your behalf. Working with us means you can leverage our expertise and operational experience and access a dedicated team who understands your organization and needs. We strive to deliver economies of scale, quality asset managers and potentially lower costs.

Private markets such as infrastructure, private equity, private debt and real estate can all offer you important sources of potential returns and income that are less correlated with public equity and bond markets. 

However accessing these opportunities is not as easy. When looking for an investment partner, look for someone with scale, experience, and strong relationships with high-quality asset managers around the world which means they may be well-placed to assist you with building an alternative investment portfolio.

Extensive monitoring, reporting and engagement is critical to a successful review process of an asset manager. Having a solid understanding of the asset manager’s strategy, approach and specific exposures allows you to understand the asset manager’s patterns and make better decisions.

We conduct extensive research of thousands of asset managers and strategies and provide this forward-looking reporting via our MercerInsight^® research platform, through our advice and it's integrated into the solutions we deliver clients.

Although it’s extremely difficult to predict where the next economic shock will come from, it’s important that your portfolio is well diversified and this diversification is reviewed and test on a regular basis.

Diversification is achieved through a mix of asset managers, asset classes and exposures and, drivers of return. Most not for profit investors are very well positioned to invest in less liquid asset classes and these can help reduce the volatility of your portfolio.

We can help you build a diversified portfolio and strategic asset allocation that is well positioned for the future and also enables you to take advantage of short–medium term opportunities that may arise.

We have decades of experience helping clients across the globe integrate sustainability into their portfolios. This includes ESG, impact investing and DEI strategies. We can help you construct a portfolio and strategy to support your organization’s wider goals.

We can work with you to develop the policies and principles that are aligned to your requirements and we will work with you to ensure these are executed, monitored and developed over time. Mercer is a signatory to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment.

We can help you develop and execute a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy and process within your investment portfolios. We provide advice on KPIs and a framework to monitor these KPIs for all of the managers within your portfolio. We place a high value on diversity and inclusion when monitoring and selecting asset managers.

DEI is part of Mercer’s social responsibility as a global company. It’s one of our core values and our work in this area centers on a commitment to employees, our clients, and the communities in which we operate. Our ESG committee oversees diversity and inclusion issues within the company, including monitoring and reporting.