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May 31, 2024
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Not really. It sounds like they pick their consultants from their WM FAs, but investment consulting is very different from wealth management.
It typically consists of advising institutional investors (pension plans, endowments/foundations, etc) on how to allocate their money and which asset management firms to hire.
It's more common for a firm to hire an independent investment consulting firm - the big ones are places like Mercer, Hewitt, Towers Perrin/Towers Watson (those 3 all have actuarial practices), Wilshire, Russell, RogersCasey, Ennis Knupp, Cambridge Associates, NEPC, etc.
good starting point for a career?
Generally, yes. You get to build a pretty broad knowledge of finance/investing. But it depends on where you are in the group and what you want to do long term. If your goal is to be a stock picker, then being involved in manager research stuff is a great start (you get to know a ton of managers and investment styles). I think the client side of investment consulting can be pretty lousy, but senior people tend to turn it into some awesome jobs.
There are 2 things to be aware of: 1) their client makeup. Most consultants have developed a reputation that is hard to shake and tend to get hired by certain kinds of clients (Cambridge is foundation/endowment, I think NEPC tends to have more public clients than others, some of the others are almost entirely corporate). If they are mostly corporate plans that are closed or at risk of closing: they are all becoming defined contribution/401k plans. For those clients, it means lower fees and really boring work. You don't want to do 401k stuff.
2) most investment consulting firms use retainers, not billable hours. Think "lifestyle job". The pay is going to be steady (there isn't going to be a giant upside from bonuses) and there's no reason you should be killing yourself with hours.
but if my goal is research/top MBA, I should prob pick a different offer, such as a mid tier consulting firm or top tech corp finance group, correct?
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