Effective consulting techniques
How effectively do you manage the investment and fiduciary decisions concerning your employee benefit plans and other institutional pools of assets? How expertly 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 expertise, resources and objectivity when evaluating your asset allocation, new investment opportunities and actual investment results?
Combined experience - financial and fiduciary. Educated and timely decision making based on deep and extensive research and market knowledge. Dedicated, skilled professionals. These are some of the key elements to achieving your organization's portfolio goals.
Expertise, experience and independence
Gallagher’s Investment & Fiduciary Consulting team applies its proven approach to traditional and alternative investments as both an advisor and a discretionary fiduciary (including OCIO) over defined benefit plans, VEBAs, 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 helps you make well-founded, informed choices.
Independent objectivity. A strategic advantage for investment consulting
At Gallagher, we operate with objectivity--independent and free of conflicts of interest. This allows us to focus on solutions that best meet your needs. 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
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 conduct the analysis and work directly with you.
Our institutional investment and fiduciary 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
- outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) services
- socially responsible investments
Recognized investment experts delivering customized solutions
What makes us different? We have dedicated senior institutional investment professionals with deep understanding of the financial and fiduciary elements of investment decision making work with you. The team brings extensive experience with traditional and alternative investments, both as advisor and fiduciary decision-maker. We use an open investment platform promoting customized solutions that meet your needs, are independent and free from conflicts of interest.
Fiduciary decision-making
Acting as a special purpose independent fiduciary decision-maker or Qualified Professional Asset Manager (QPAM) on behalf of ERISA-regulated benefit plans and other institutions governed by ERISA or similar fiduciary standards, the Investment and Fiduciary Consulting team offers extensive expertise and experience in structuring, analyzing and making decisions regarding benefit plan investments, investment transactions and overall investment programs. In these types of engagements, we replace regular decision makers who encounter conflicts of interest, regulatory requirements or other circumstances that suggest — or require — that a qualified, independent third party take fiduciary responsibility for a particular asset or transaction.
Our distinctive qualifications to 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).
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- Expertise - We bring a unique breadth and depth of complementary fiduciary and investment analysis expertise 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.
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- Credibility with pension regulators - The U.S. Department of Labor and The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation 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.
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- Small firm flexibility, big firm depth - We are a specialized firm focused exclusively on fiduciary decision-making and advice for institutional investors. Our senior personnel work directly with you on engagements, not junior people. We have access to the broad resources of Gallagher.
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- 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 are 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, managing and disposing of employer stock in a corporate benefit plan
- voting proxies and exercising other shareholder rights pertaining to employer stock
- 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 independent financial expert on behalf of funds holding plan assets
