Prime Capital launches endowment, foundation OCIO practice

Prime Capital Financial, a retirement plan adviser and wealth manager based in Overland Park, Kansas, said Tuesday it has launched an endowments and foundations practice, taking the fiduciary credibility it has built with retirement plan sponsors and aiming it at family foundations, museums, educational institutions, health-focused foundations and other nonprofit endowments with $5 million to $250 million in assets. The practice will offer outsourced CIO and other fiduciary management services, including tailored investment management, impact strategy and governance support.

Mark Hays will lead the unit as president, bringing stops at Glenmede, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Flat World Partners, the Ontario Municipal Employees' Retirement System and Cambridge Associates to a firm that RCD's records put at $39.1 billion in regulatory AUM across 55,376 accounts.

Chief executive Glenn Spencer described the practice as a scaling of work already underway. “We’ve already been building that capability across our platform,” Spencer said, “and Mark gives us the leadership to bring it all together, scale it and deliver it to organizations at a level few firms in this space can match.”

For retirement advisers, the launch is a test of whether plan-sponsor trust travels. Prime Capital's answer is Hays, whose path through Cambridge Associates and OMERS suggests the pitch will be made in the institutional language endowments already speak.