Even for a wealth management practice, family office, trust, retirement plan or philanthropy that has dedicated the staff and the resources to conduct investment functions at the finest level of rigor and quality, is this the highest and best use of that talent and those resources and does it allow continual scaling in pursuit of the bigger purpose of the organization?
A trend has been under way in American business for decades to segment out business functions and processes that are essential but non-core, or are not part of the company’s unique value creation process, and hand them off to trusted partners, allowing the business to focus on and build its core value proposition.
Few industries have embraced this to the degree financial services has in the last several years. Legal, compliance, accounting, billing, custody and trading, CRM, web hosting, even marketing and lead generation are being partnered. For small boutique firms and offices this is often done on a fractional basis because they do not need a dedicated accounting team or full-time legal officer.
Wilde Capital Management is bringing that concept to investment services – The Fractional CIO.
Here are some of the key questions to consider when thinking about whether it makes sense to engage a partner like Wilde Capital:
- How are you accumulating and assimilating information about world events and markets and integrating that into investment decisionmaking?
- Who is looking at the investments that are being recommended before but also after they are implemented?
- Where does your framework for budgeting and allocating various types of risk come from? Is it static or dynamic?
- What process do you follow for constructing portfolio recommendations or implementation, and is it consistent across the office and scalable as you grow?
- How are you evaluating outcomes, making adjustments, and reporting to your most valuable constituency – your asset owners?
- Can you connect across stakeholders and demographics on emerging topics like social, economic and environmental justice, or the implications of new financial technologies like crypto and blockchain?
Wilde Capital’s Fractional CIO service can be received as a(n):
Subscription service – For offices that just need inputs like tactical asset allocation signals, investment models or collateral like investor letters, newsletters, blogs and podcasts, billed periodically on a hard-dollar basis.
A la carte service – For offices that have specific tasks like due diligence reviews of existing investment recommendations, billed by task or project on a hard-dollar basis.
Delegated authority service – For offices that want to share or assign practical and fiduciary authority for investment implementation, billed according to assets under advisement.
Consulting service – For offices that want to build capacity internally, receive expert guidance on partners, tools and resources, or establish an institutional grade investment or ESG discipline, billed by project on a hard-dollar basis.