Catholic Archdiocese Investment Consultant Search
Client & Objective
A Catholic Archdiocese with multiple asset pools—including reserve and endowment funds, pension plans, health benefits, and charitable foundations—engaged North Pier to evaluate its advisor structure. At the time, four separate consultants were involved, and the pools were overseen by different committees with varying levels of authority. The Archdiocese tasked North Pier with assessing the current framework and recommending improvements to governance, coordination, and overall efficiency.
Process
North Pier led an evaluation and search that began with discovery interviews and fiduciary education touchpoints. While formal education sessions were not conducted, the team incorporated educational elements throughout the engagement when opportunities allowed. Initial efforts focused on understanding the Archdiocese’s complex governance landscape, including the roles, responsibilities, and authority levels of the various committees overseeing each asset pool.
Following this discovery phase, North Pier conducted targeted committee interviews to assess decision-making structures and identify inefficiencies stemming from fragmented oversight. Based on these findings, the team provided recommendations to streamline governance—encouraging consolidation of advisory relationships and improved coordination across committees.
With a refined understanding of the client’s needs, North Pier built a detailed client profile and crafted a comprehensive RFP, which was issued to potential providers. Responses were standardized and analyzed, enabling objective comparisons. The resulting data guided the committees in selecting finalists. North Pier then moderated finalist presentations, facilitated the selection conference, and supported contract negotiations, along with post-selection diligence.
Results
-The oversight committees unanimously selected a single consulting firm to advise all asset pools, replacing multiple legacy advisors and significantly simplifying the advisory structure.
-Consulting fees across the pools were reduced by approximately 14%, with North Pier modeling a fair and transparent allocation of the savings based on each pool’s size, complexity, and oversight requirements.
-Consolidated oversight enhanced reporting consistency enabled enterprise-level capabilities—including integrated risk analytics, liquidity assessments, and coordinated rebalancing across all pools.