Institutional

A Unique Level of Client Service

The complex needs of institutional clients demands a specialized service offering to ensure each unique situation is addressed.  While investment management is the core of our offering to institutional clients, our wealth management team is also involved where appropriate.  Wealth management can assist in providing answers to questions around a sustainable spending policy, cash flow projections or paying down debt, to name a few.

In order to effectively provide a deep level of service, Gries Financial Partners works hard to understand, and value, your organization’s mission.  This manifests itself in several ways, including being invited to participate on board task forces in addition to the primary engagement of providing investment counsel.

Most institutional clients request quarterly meetings, however, Gries Financial Partners has, in some cases, met monthly with clients.  Meetings or presentation can be tailored to meet client requests, including areas such as scenario analysis and the related impact on a given investment portfolio.  Our service ideal is to be as involved as the client deems desirable or necessary.

Best in Class Reporting & Monitoring

The idea behind portfolio and performance reporting to institutional clients is understanding our audience.  Since institutional investment committees are generally savvy but have varying levels of investment expertise, we work to make reporting extremely thorough, informational and just as importantly, readable.

Reports are issued, at a minimum, quarterly, but through an easy to access online portal, institutional clients can receive up-to-date information daily and run their own analysis at any point (with or without our guidance).  Typically, we work with clients to develop ancillary reports (for example, an analysis of risk-return) that committee members want to track in the context of the Investment Policy Statement and needs of the organization.  Much of our reporting platform is customizable.

Differentiating Institutional Client Goals

While certain aspects of investment management are transferable across all clients, serving institutional clients involves different skill sets and perspectives. At Gries Financial Partners, our primary institutional focus is on nonprofit endowments and foundations. We have built an expertise and frame of reference that allows us to provide best in class, discretionary and non-discretionary investment counsel to these constituencies.

Many endowments and foundations need to balance a long term investment timeframe with current spending policies and, in some cases, bond offerings or other debt. As a starting point, we work with institutional clients, their investment committees, boards and senior management, to develop a comprehensive and appropriately flexible Investment Policy Statement (IPS) based on a thorough understanding of the organization past, present and future.