For boards and investment committees with limited internal staff resources that wish to continue having an active role in investment strategy and decision making—while benefiting from competent implementation of those decisions and avoiding the high cost of discretionary OCIO mandates—RVK offers a service beyond the traditional general investment consultant’s scope of work. This additional service—Directed Consulting Services or “DCS”—extends our investment consulting support and advice by adding fund investment administrative support. RVK’s DCS is a non-discretionary option under which our client’s board/committee retains final authority over all investment decisions while benefiting from the delegation of fund administrative support to the same RVK team providing investment consulting advice.
Under our DCS paradigm, RVK develops actionable investment advice with specific options and recommendations for client approval. Upon making these investment decisions, the client then issues explicit and specific direction to the RVK team to take the necessary implementing actions. This may include coordinating and monitoring transactions with investment managers, custodian banks, and other relevant parties; preparing directive letters; ensuring adequate cash balances, monitoring a portfolio for rebalancing opportunities (per the respective investment policy statement); and more. While this service requires periodic engagement by a client’s board/committee regarding investment decisions, it provides four key advantages:
- It places investment-related fund administrative tasks in the strong and experienced hands here at RVK;
- It can help facilitate consistency and timely implementation of investment decisions;
- It is typically substantially less expensive than hiring a fully discretionary OCIO manager, leaving more assets available to fund an organization's key objectives while retaining client control over investment decisions; and
- It can provide more transparency into the drivers of portfolio returns.
In summary, we believe this service provides many of the benefits of OCIO services, but at a substantially lower cost and without clients having to surrender control over investment decision making.