Endowments and Foundations Investment Strategy

Putting innovation into practice

Historically, endowments and foundations have been viewed as ‘ahead of the curve’ on a number of themes—such as the use of private equity and other alternative investment strategies. The combination of a long-term investment horizon, relative regulatory freedom and innovation-friendly governance structures continues to be a powerful one.

Today, we continue to see foundation and endowment investors seeking to advance and enhance portfolios with new developments—such as exploring esoteric investment strategies that have not yet reached the institutional mainstream, driving ‘impact investment’ product development and uncovering unfamiliar/emerging managers.

Supporting the needs of foundations and endowments

Endowments and foundations represent a very significant proportion of bfinance’s client base (>10%). Acting as an extension of their teams, we offer flexible support in a range of areas. The most popular service for these investors during recent years has been manager research and selection: the bfinance process has helped these clients to research strategies, acquire market knowledge and uncover a broad range of solutions.

Other key services for our endowment and foundation clients include strategic portfolio design / strategic asset allocation, fee reviews, risk analytics, ESG advisory and operational due diligence. The majority of endowment/foundation clients have appointed bfinance to provide targeted support on a project basis (e.g. 8-12 weeks); long-term support is also available.

Latest case studies

US/Canada Equity, Dividend Focus

This investor sought to switch from passive strategies towards active management, with the primary...

Portfolio Solutions – Strategic Portfolio Design, Real Estate and Infrastructure

This German endowment fund engaged bfinance to review its current real estate and infrastructure...

Market-Independent Absolute Return

This investor sought market-independent strategies which exhibit very limited equity / credit beta...

ESG/Impact Maritime Leasing

The client, a UK endowment fund with strong environmental, social and governance (ESG)...

Recent testimonials

What our clients say

One of the key reasons we use bfinance is their analysis; the amount of analysis that was done on the submissions was really top notch.

Foundation, North America

bfinance will provide the solutions. They will hear the problem and they’ll set up the solution. They’ve done that repeatedly on different topics.

Endowment, Asia Pacific

The good thing about bfinance is that they do not have a preference. They are not pushing one manager over the other. They will find the best manager for you. It is an unbiased recommendation.

Foundation, US

Recent insights