Medical Endowment Fund Manager Selection

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

Are External Financial Consultants Necessary?

[By Dr. David E. Marcinko MBA CMP]

http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

John English, of the Ford Foundation, once observed that:

[T]he thing that is most interesting to me is that every one of the managers is able to give me a chart that shows me he was in the first quartile or the first decile. I have never had a prospective manager come in and say, ‘We’re in the fourth quartile or bottom decile’.

According to Wayne Firebaugh CPA, CFP® CMP™ most medical endowment funds today, even those with internal investment staff, rely heavily upon consultants and external managers.

In fact, a 2006 Commonfund Benchmarks Healthcare Study revealed that 85% of all surveyed institutions relied upon consultants with an even greater percentage of larger endowments relying upon consultants.  The common reasons given by endowments for such reliance are augmenting staff and oddly enough, cost containment.  In essence, the endowment staff’s job becomes one of managing the managers.

Manager Selection 

Even those endowments that use consultants to assist in selecting outside managers remain involved in the selection and monitoring process.  Interestingly, performance should generally not be the overriding criterion for selecting a manager.  Selecting a manager could be viewed as a two-step process in which the endowment first establishes its initial allocation and determines what classes will require an external manager.  The second part of the process is to select a manager that due diligence has indicated to have two primary characteristics: integrity and a repeatable and sustainable systematic process.  These characteristics are interrelated, as a manager who embodies integrity will also strive to follow the established investment selection process.

Of Medical-Managers

In medicine, obtaining the best care often means consulting a specialist.  As a manager of managers, the average endowment should seek specialist managers within a given asset class. Just as physicians and healthcare institutions gain additional insight and skill in their area of specialty, investment managers may be able to gain informational or system advantages within a given concentrated area of investments.

Assessment

Since most plan managers are seeking positive alpha by actively managing certain asset classes, many successful endowments will use a greater number of external managers in the concentrated segments than they will in the larger, more efficient markets.

Conclusion

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