eVestment, a specialist in institutional investment data and analytics, has become the first institutional investment platform to offer access to the Alpha Nasdaq OCIO Indices. The indices, launched in November 2019, provide a framework for institutional investors to objectively measure and monitor the performance of OCIOs.
Additionally, several more OCIOs – including Meketa, Wilshire, Fund Evaluation Group and RockCreek – have started supplying data to the indices this quarter, making a total of 26 firms sharing their OCIO data.
OCIOs (Outsourced Chief Investment Officers) are third-party service providers that serve as chief investment officers for institutional investors. An OCIO assumes the legal and fiduciary responsibilities of a chief investment officer and provides those services externally.
Alpha Capital Management, a best-in-class OCIO search provider, and eVestment’s parent company Nasdaq collaborated on developing the family of indices, which include a broad market index as well as variations focused on specific plan types, risk profiles and plan sizes. The indices now have anonymous performance and asset allocation data for benchmarking OCIOs, with performance data going back 20 years and asset allocation data for over 25 asset classes.
Said Meketa Co-CEO Stephen McCourt, says: ““We believe the indices will provide institutions another avenue to evaluate performance of OCIO providers and we are happy to be participating.”
“eVestment’s goal is to provide our clients with data and tools that increase transparency and help them make better decisions,” said eVestment Head of Data Strategy Erika Spence. “Offering the Alpha Nasdaq OCIO Indices is a natural fit for us. Transparency in the OCIO space has been a challenge, with no reliable way to compare and monitor OCIO providers until now. eVestment is pleased to be the first data and analytics platform to offer this intelligence.”
eVestment offers the indices free to institutional investor clients because of these clients’ strong and growing interest in OCIOs. OCIO AUM is estimated to be north of USD2.3 trillion, according to some studies.
“In the past, OCIOs were measured by a wide variety of metrics with many being inaccurate,” says Brad Alford, founder of Alpha Capital Management. “The Alpha Nasdaq OCIO Indices help create a level playing field and bring transparency and uniformity to how OCIOs are measured. This is a game changer for institutional investors looking into outsourcing their investments.”
