The OCIO Advantage: Institutional-Grade Investing for Private Wealth
November 26, 2025 | By Forthlane Team
Many of our clients tell us that today’s investment landscape feels more complex and uncertain than ever – and we agree. The dynamics that once made investing appear straightforward have shifted materially. For decades, portfolios benefited from a tailwind of falling interest rates, abundant liquidity, and steadily rising equity markets, particularly in the U.S. That backdrop is changing. Investors today must contend with a new set of macroeconomic headwinds, and an expanding universe of private and alternative asset classes that command institutional-grade expertise and access.
For many ultra-high-net-worth families, optimizing their portfolios through building and managing an investment strategy of this grade can be overwhelming and costly. The Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) model is an effective solution to meet this growing need.
What is an OCIO?
Globally, the OCIO model is one of the fastest growing segments of investment management. In the United States alone, independent OCIO firms oversee an estimated $4.9 trillion of assets. In contrast, the model remains relatively new in Canada.
The OCIO model allows investors – whether individuals, families, or institutions, to delegate the responsibilities of a Chief Investment Officer to a specialized third-party. It draws on the sophisticated investment practices of leading financial institutions that run some of the largest pension and endowment funds globally (example: Yale Endowment and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan). These institutions and others like them have reshaped the thinking on modern institutional investing by moving beyond traditional stocks and bonds. They have embraced alternatives and specialist managers to achieve a better combination of investment returns combined with stronger diversification and resilience.
The OCIO model adapts those same principles for private investors, delivering institutional-grade portfolio management without the cost and complexity of building an in-house investment office. Even families with their own investment teams can benefit, as an OCIO can complement in-house capabilities and allow internal teams to focus on specific areas such as direct private equity investments.
What are the defining features of an OCIO?
What defines an OCIO is not just what it does, but how it does it. A true OCIO requires three things: (i) independence; (ii) access enabled by purchasing power and sophistication; and (iii) performance accountability.
1) Independent and Conflict-free Structure
A true OCIO is conflict-free and operates under a fiduciary standard. Its mandate is to identify and allocate to the best specialist managers worldwide on behalf of clients – free from bias or other incentives. This approach stands in contrast to the “closed architecture” of many firms, which are limited to distributing their own internally managed products or receive compensation from a limited roster of preferred managers.
A conflict-free OCIO can curate portfolios from an open-architecture universe of global specialists. It has the flexibility and nimbleness to allocate to strategies most relevant to the prevailing macroeconomic environment and adjust as required.
2) Access and Economies of Scale
The second defining element of the OCIO model is access and purchasing power. By pooling client capital, an OCIO can access world-class investment managers that would otherwise be out of reach to most individual families, and often at more favorable fees and terms.
Many managers set minimum commitments in the multi-million-dollar range – thresholds that are prohibitive for non-institutional clients. Using economies of scale, an OCIO provides clients with access to managers, many of whom are closed to new investors, and the ability to diversify across multiple strategies within a certain asset class. Through the OCIO model, clients achieve the same diversified exposure with a fraction of the investment and complexity.
3) Accountability
The third and perhaps most important defining element of a true OCIO is accountability. An OCIO assumes full fiduciary responsibility for investment decisions, their implementation, and ultimately portfolio outcomes. It is not a consulting relationship, but one built on full-time focus, independent decision making, and measurable results.
Why this matters to us
At Forthlane Partners, we believe the key to preserving and compounding wealth in today’s complex world is to adopt this same institutional framework that has guided some of the world’s most sophisticated investors. Our OCIO approach looks beyond traditional stocks and bonds, incorporating alternative assets to enhance portfolio diversification and resilience – leveraging specialist fund managers around the world. We act as a true fiduciary, offering independent and aligned, institutional-grade access and investment management to our clients in a cost-effective manner.
Our clients come to us for different reasons: some for peace of mind knowing a professional office is accountable for results; others for access to world-class managers they could not reach on their own; and many for the confidence that our institutional bench strength brings to every client.