The Ledger
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Samuels: NEPC's diligence framework uses 265 questions and data points
“These 265 questions, data points that we calculate are guideposts for our diligence.”
Samuels: NEPC does not evaluate researchers on short-term pick outperformance
“We're not like the asset management institutions that are going to measure our researchers on their outperformance of names that they pick because it's a long-term measurement cycle, especially with private markets.”
NEPC expects to expand private markets deployment to $8B in two years
“We expect to put double the amount of capital to work in private markets in the next two years. So looking at more like eight billion.”
Samuels: NEPC underwrote 17 diverse-owned strategies into client portfolios last year
“And last year, we underwrote 17 diverse-owned strategies that are in client portfolios now.”
Samuels: Asking 'why' three times bypasses GP marketing scripts
“And another tool that we use is to ask why three times. So if they tell you a story about a stock, You dig a layer deeper and say, well, why is that? Then you can really get to the meat of what is actually happening and go beyond that prepared marketing respon…”
NEPC deploys $5B in private strategies and $26B in public searches
“So in private markets, we expect to put about five billion dollars to work in our highest conviction strategies. Now, our clients have a ton of underlying exposures to some of their own investments that we help them with, but are maybe not our highest convicti…”
NEPC tracks roughly 1,200 high-conviction focus placement managers across asset classes
“Those are the ones we spend our most time on and try to get into our clients' portfolios, and we have about 1200. So that's across equity, credit, multi-asset, hedge funds, private equity, private debt, and real assets.”
Samuels: NEPC advises and manages over $1.5 trillion across 400 clients
“And we have over one and a half trillion in assets under advisement and under management. We have about 400 clients across seven different client groups.”
McCusker: BlackRock's Strategic Income Opportunities is NEPC's most notable BlackRock allocation
“So we do think highly of them and we use them in a lot of different ways, but Rick's strategic income opportunity strategy is probably the most notable one that we use.”
McCusker: Corporate LDI clients saw the most direct benefit from rebalancing
“If they had an LDI allocation, which most of them do, They saw some of the biggest gains from fixed income, and they were probably the earliest to rebalance, because rates fell very quickly, and it was actually a positive basis mismatch for them if they had an…”
McCusker: Video calls reduce informal competitor intelligence gathered during manager meetings
“That may be one of the things that we lose by not having the in-person meetings in the office. I think that can often be part of the conversation at the beginning or end of a manager meeting, kind of the casual chit chat of, hey, what are you hearing from othe…”
McCusker: Asset managers across strategies are exploring the TALF credit opportunity
“Everyone is looking at the TALF opportunity now, so we've got everything from long only liquid Managers talking about that.”
NEPC's bespoke OCIO business manages over $20 billion across 50 clients
“So we have what is now a large OCIO business with probably over twenty billion dollars, over 50 clients. Every portfolio that we build is bespoke.”
Most NEPC client large-cap US equity dollars are passive
“If I go by dollar count, it's much, much higher because many of our large public funds are passive in U.S. Equities and often running it internally for cost management purposes.”
NEPC maintains an approved list of up to 400 long-only managers
“I think we have about 350 to 400 managers in long only overall, so probably 200 or so of those, or 150 to 200 are equity.”
Public pension asset allocation changes take three to six months
“On the other end of the spectrum, we can go to a, say, a public plan, and we've got to go through the governance process, we've got to go through monthly meetings, we've got to think about what that means for their discount rate and have conversations about th…”
McCusker: NEPC's 50 partners kept deal confidential for seven months
“Having our partners keep it confidential for what amounted to about seven months, Which is a borderline miracle at the end of the day.”
McCusker: NEPC was fully employee-owned for nearly 40 years
“We've been fully independent, employee-owned our entire almost forty-year existence, but no surprise, we always say yes to those meetings.”
Samuels: NEPC Manager Evaluation Framework Has Over 400 Questions
“So that framework is very extensive, and it's upwards of 400 questions that I want each and every analyst to be able to answer.”
McCusker: Healthcare clients paused rebalancing to prioritize liquidity during COVID-19
“So most of those clients have been Less focused on new opportunities, less focused on even rebalancing, just making sure that they have credit lines in place, that they have access to liquidity if they need it.”
NEPC is fully employee-owned by 38 partners
“We're 38 partners who own the business 100%. There's not an outside owner. We're not publicly traded.”