Effective fiduciary consulting techniques
How effectively do you manage the investment and fiduciary decisions concerning your employee benefit plans and other institutional pools of assets? How do you measure and manage risk and expenses? Do you protect yourself from legal liability by conforming to fiduciary standards of care and prudence? Do you apply sufficient knowledge, resources and objectivity when evaluating your asset allocation, new investment opportunities and actual investment results?
To help you achieve your organization's portfolio goals, our dedicated, skilled professionals combine financial and fiduciary experience to make educated and timely decisions based on deep and extensive investment research and market knowledge.
Professionalism, experience and independence
Gallagher's Institutional Investment Consulting and Fiduciary Services team applies its proven approach to traditional and alternative investments as both an advisor and a discretionary investment manager — including outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) over defined benefit plans, voluntary employees' beneficiary association (VEBA) plans, defined contribution plans, hybrid or "variable" pension plans, endowments, foundations, healthcare and religious portfolios. With a clear understanding of the benefits and risks to investment decisions, your Gallagher advisor can help you make well-founded, informed investment choices.
Independent objectivity: A strategic advantage for investment consulting
At Gallagher, we operate with objectivity — independent and free of conflicts of interest. This neutrality allows us to focus on solutions that meet your needs. We use an open investment platform with only third-party investment funds — no proprietary funds, no "pay to play" money from investment managers and no soft-dollar payments.
Proactive investment decision-making and fiduciary services
Drawing on the knowledge and experience of your partners is something you should be able to count on. In changing market conditions, both short- and long-term financial objectives face daily threats. With Gallagher, you have an experienced advisor in our team of senior investment and fiduciary professionals who conducts the analysis and works directly with you.
Our institutional investment consulting services include:
- Investment policy statement and asset allocation
- Investment structure, manager due diligence and selection
- Private markets due diligence and selection
- Investment manager monitoring and performance reporting
- OCIO services
- Socially responsible investments
Recognized investment professionals delivering customized solutions
What makes us different? You'll work with our dedicated senior institutional investment professionals with deep understanding of the financial and fiduciary elements of investment consulting decision-making. The team brings extensive experience with traditional and alternative investments, both as advisors and discretionary investment managers. We use an open investment platform promoting customized solutions that meet your needs, and we're independent and free from conflicts of interest.
Independent fiduciary decision-making services
Our Institutional Investment Consulting and Fiduciary Service team serves as a knowledgeable independent fiduciary decision-maker when legally necessary or to resolve inherent or perceived conflicts of interests that render it difficult or impossible for plan fiduciaries to make a particular decision regarding their benefit plan. We act as a special-purpose independent fiduciary decision-maker or a qualified professional asset manager (QPAM) on behalf of Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)-regulated benefit plans and other institutions governed by ERISA or similar fiduciary standards. Our team offers extensive experience in structuring, analyzing and making decisions regarding benefit plan investments, investment transactions and overall investment programs.
Our distinctive qualifications for independent fiduciary decision-making assignments include:
- Extensive experience. Gallagher has served as an independent fiduciary under ERISA since 1989 on many different engagements involving the management, valuation and/or disposition of employer-related assets on behalf of ERISA-governed benefit plans and transactions between plans and related parties (such as the sponsoring employer or union, or an affiliated benefit fund).
- Insights. We bring a unique breadth and depth of complementary fiduciary and investment analysis to assignments, with a team of seasoned professionals experienced in ERISA compliance, fiduciary standards, securities analysis, and real estate finance and benefit plan investment structures.
- Credibility with pension regulators. The US Department of Labor (DOL) and The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) have repeatedly approved or selected our firm in connection with litigation settlements, to help cure prohibited transactions or to evaluate particular investment assets or practices.
- Small firm flexibility, big firm depth. We're a specialized practice focused exclusively on fiduciary decision-making and advice on behalf of ERISA benefit plans. Our senior personnel — not junior team members — work directly with you on engagements. We have access to the broad resources of Gallagher.
- Objectivity and independence. We bring to fiduciary decision-making assignments the independence and objectivity that in-house fiduciaries desire when hiring an independent fiduciary. With no investment banking, lending, asset management or corporate financial advisory relationships, we're free from any real or perceived conflicting obligations or interests that could subject the role of the independent fiduciary to challenge and can undermine the very purpose for engaging such a fiduciary.
As a fiduciary decision-maker, our firm provides:
- Monitoring and managing employer stock held in a corporate benefit plan, including the possible distribution of such stock
- Voting proxies and exercising other shareholder rights pertaining to employer stock
- Disposing of non-employee securities held in a corporate benefit plan
- Evaluating and negotiating terms of in-kind contributions of employer stock and real estate, and managing the asset on behalf of the plan once contributed
- Supporting prohibited transaction applications to the DOL for sale and lease transactions involving employer real property between plans and parties-in-interest
- Negotiating/evaluating/approving class action litigation settlements involving various claims under ERISA and securities laws
- Serving as an independent fiduciary on behalf of benefit plan investors in investment funds holding plan assets
