Tag: endowments

As market conditions look set to change dramatically, higher-education endowments can still achieve excess returns if they go about building their portfolio with strong equities exposure and strategies from smaller managers, according to a recent paper from TIFF Investment Management.

“We would argue that the excess returns that some of these organizations earned, and that we have earned in the recent past, are in fact sustainable,” said Matt Hoehn, co-head of customized asset allocation for the outsourced chief investment officer.

Read the full article, FundFire: Equities Core, Smaller Managers Key to ‘Excess Returns’ for Endowments: Report

Endowments using time-tested principles can attain excess returns and long-term results above what the global economy and indices offer, according to recently released research.

TIFF Investment Management’s Higher Education Endowment Results: Reflections on Recent Returns and Outlook for the Future whitepaper finds that institutions will attain alpha if they use equities as the cornerstone of their portfolios, alternative investments in a research-driven, intelligent way and pick public market managers using a set of key characteristics.

Read the full article, Financial Investment News: Endowments Can Obtain Alpha By Using Time-Tested Elements: Study

The always highly anticipated annual university endowment results for fiscal 2021 (FY 2021) were released in February, triggering the usual flurry of articles in the financial media. These results received a great deal of attention, largely because of the uniquely strong returns. In our new white paper, “Higher Education Endowment Results: Reflections on Recent Returns and Outlook for the Future”, we aim to:

• Explain the context for the strong returns, focusing on the asset classes that drove this outcome
• Give our perspective on the outlook for market returns in the coming years
• Discuss some of the key investment tenets that, we at TIFF, believe contributed to strong outperformance from some select institutions

Expect more college and university endowments to invest in private equity and venture capital moving forward. That was one takeaway from a conversation with leaders of TIFF Investment Management, a firm that advises nonprofit organizations, including higher-education institutions.

The schools that saw the largest returns in fiscal 2021, a record year for university endowments, profited most from private equity and venture funds, said Kane Brenan, TIFF’s CEO, and Jess Portis, head of member portfolio management and services. That’s inspiring more college endowments to find ways to get a piece of the action. Private equity and venture capital accounted for just 2.3% of asset allocation in endowments between $25 million and $50 million, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers-TIAA 2020 “Study of Endowments.” Meanwhile, endowments over $1 billion relied on those alternative investments for a quarter of their asset allocations.