What separates the best OCIO search consultants: perspective on a market in motion

Most investment committees start an OCIO search with practical questions. How long will it take? Which firms should we invite? How do we compare proposals and run the finalist interviews? (Check out our search FAQs for more here.)

An equally important question gets less attention: what expertise does the committee need to make this decision well?

The answer shapes what you should expect from a search consultant. Some consultants mainly run the process. Others also bring independent judgment and current knowledge of the OCIO marketplace to each decision along the way. Both kinds of help have a place, and a committee should know which one (or both) it is solving for.

Our earlier piece, The Hidden Cost of a DIY OCIO Search, looked at the time and coordination a search demands. This one looks at the expertise a search consultant brings to the decisions inside it.

What a well-run process gives you

An OCIO search takes a lot of coordination. Someone has to set objectives, build the candidate list, write the request for information, schedule interviews, evaluate proposals, record findings and support the committee's deliberations.

This work matters. A disciplined process keeps the evaluation consistent, makes clear who is responsible for each step and leaves a record the committee can return to years later.

It also protects the committee's time. Many members have full-time jobs elsewhere, and an organized search asks less of them.

Process quality and evaluation quality are separate things, though. Two searches can follow the same steps and use the same scoring template and still produce decisions of very different quality. The difference comes from the knowledge and judgment applied at each step.

The OCIO marketplace changes between your searches

A committee might run an OCIO search once every 5, 10 or 15 years. The providers keep changing in between.

Firms merge or get acquired. Leadership teams turn over. Investment philosophies develop. Firms add capabilities, change how they implement portfolios, rebuild their technology and reorganize client service.

A proposal shows how a firm presents itself today. It rarely shows how the firm got there: who left, what was acquired, which parts of the platform are new and which have been through several market cycles. That history helps a committee read the proposal correctly.

In February 2019, FundFire mapped 10 years of consultant mergers and acquisitions, from January 2009 to February 2019. Falling fee revenue had pushed dozens of firms to sell or combine in search of scale.

Our founder, Anna Dunn Tabke, was quoted in that piece. Her view was that consolidation might not be permanent: "It's more like a pendulum." Within a decade, she suggested, some clients might prefer a smaller firm where they matter more as a client.

A second wave has followed, and this time it reaches deep into the OCIO market. The buyers look different too. Wealth managers and private equity-backed advisory firms now do much of the buying. Cerity Partners bought Agility from Perella Weinberg in 2024 and agreed to merge with Verus in 2026. Hightower took a majority stake in NEPC. Cresset combined with Monticello Associates. In 2026 alone, Brown Advisory invested in RockCreek and Creative Planning agreed to buy RVK. We expect at least one more deal before the year closes.

For a committee, the question is what these changes mean for the service it receives and the investment opportunities its OCIO can access. When ownership, leadership, scale or structure changes, the way a firm delivers advice and investment services can change with it. A provider's current capabilities matter. So does the path it took to build them. (Want to read more about this? We wrote about this in our piece, Your OCIO Got Acquired? Next Steps for Fiduciaries.)

Following the market continuously

Someone who spends most of the working year following OCIO providers sees the market differently from someone who meets it mainly when a client starts a search.

Leita's knowledge comes from regular in-depth conversations with providers, ongoing due diligence, tracking organizational changes, automated scraping of Form ADVs and other firm filings, and working with institutions over many years. It builds pattern recognition. We have hands-on experience evaluating which changes at a firm matter and the tradeoffs that are driven by OCIO go-to-market strategies.

Leita meets with several OCIO providers every week, through a mix of formal due diligence and ongoing conversations. We hold completed due diligence questionnaires on 70 OCIO providers and preliminary data on many others.

Between searches, we collect and refresh each provider's due diligence questionnaire, Form ADV data, fee and performance data, and how the firm positions itself in the market. We track departures and other organizational changes formally through DDQs and RFP responses, and informally through those regular conversations. Our founder knows many of the senior people at OCIO firms, and when something changes, she hears it from them directly.

Where judgment matters most

Many OCIO providers can show institutional experience, credible investment teams and established processes. The harder work is choosing among capable firms whose strengths differ.

An experienced OCIO search firm helps a committee work through nuanced questions like these:

•         How does the firm's investment philosophy show up in actual portfolio construction and implementation?

•         How well does its approach fit the institution's governance structure and the way the committee likes to make decisions?

•         Which operational capabilities matter for this institution's circumstances?

•         How could changes in ownership, leadership or organization affect the relationship?

•         Which differences among the finalists are real, and which are differences in presentation?

•         What is the committee giving up when it prefers one provider over another?

A scoring framework keeps the comparison consistent. Answering these questions also takes context, interpretation and an advisor willing to say "we need to find out more" when the evidence is thin.

Here's an example from the field:

One foundation started its OCIO search on its own. Staff sent a preliminary information request to a list of firms and began scoring the responses. Partway through, they decided they needed help and called our founder for help.

The foundation invests with a strong equity lens and wanted to consider OCIO firms that shared it. Its list had missed one of the strongest boutiques in the market, a firm with diverse ownership. We kept the work the foundation had already done, added that firm and evaluated it alongside the others. It reached the finals.

It did not win the mandate. The committee still chose from the full set of firms that fit its priorities, and it could explain why it picked the winner over a firm it had every reason to consider.

Good search advice starts before the RFP

An institution's objectives, governance structure, liquidity needs, operational resources and appetite for delegation should shape the search from the first meeting. An experienced advisor helps the institution settle which differences between providers matter for its own situation, before anyone writes a candidate list.

Leita is often asked how we narrow the field from 100 OCIO providers to a short-list of candidates. This is often the easiest part for us, since it is grounded in a solid understanding of a client's needs and preferences, and the way OCIO firms' strengths and tradeoffs align with those. There is no perfect OCIO, but our unique perspective on industry allows our process to help committees understand how OCIOs align with their preferences.

Independence and specialization

These are two different qualities that the best OCIO search firms have, and both matter.

At Leita, our independence is critical. We have no competing interests or revenue sources. Our interests are completely aligned with our clients, not with the OCIOs who seek to partner with them. We believe that independence from conflict is the most important characteristic an OCIO search firm should possess.

Specialization is about how the OCIO search consultant builds and keeps the expertise the work requires. Leita is completely focused on OCIO search, with no other lines of business to distract from our laser focus on matching institutions with the best OCIOs. 

Know what you're buying

Institutions need different levels of help from an OCIO search provider. Some mainly need project management, while others face governance, investment, operational or relationship decisions and benefit immensely from an experienced advisor alongside them.

When you compare search consultants, we recommend comparing the scope and substance of the work along with the fee to ensure you're receiving the support your committee needs to make a lasting investment partnership decision.

Questions to ask a prospective search consultant

1.       How do you keep up with the OCIO marketplace between client searches?

2.       How do you spot and evaluate changes in a provider's organization, investment approach or operating model?

3.       How does your experience affect which firms you suggest we consider?

4.       How do you weigh governance and operational capability alongside investment capability?

5.       Who will personally do the evaluation and advise our committee?

6.       What other business lines, compensation arrangements or relationships with OCIOs do your firm or affiliates have?

7.       Can you give an example of a search where your judgment changed its direction or outcome?

Make a 10+ year decision

A committee may run an OCIO search rarely, but the result can shape its investment program and governance relationships for a decade or more.

A good search ends with more than a selected provider. The committee should understand the alternatives, the tradeoffs and the reasons for its choice well enough to explain the decision and carry it out with confidence. Our clients are set up for a smooth transition on the operations side, with a committee that has the momentum and the grounding to immediately launch into important strategic investment work on Day 1.

A search with Leita lasts several months, but the knowledge we bring to the OCIO market has been built over decades.