Overview
Advisory Business
Our Firm
Anodos Advisors, LLC ("Anodos") is an investment governance consulting firm. Anodos was
formed in 2005 to meet the needs of foundation and endowment boards, ERISA trustees, non-
corporate trustees, and families of means. We help our clients answer the question, “Is my
investment advisor doing a good job?” For some clients answering this question is a matter of
curiosity. For most it is a duty of care they are obligated to fulfill. We provide support in the
development and administration of investment governance and oversight policies and
procedures.
Anodos does NOT manage money. In our view, it would be impossible to preserve our
objectivity if we were both providing investment governance functions for our clients and also
providing a competitive service offering to the investment advisors we were auditing. We are
prohibited by contract from ever providing investment advisory services to our clients.
Anodos does NOT introduce candidate investment advisors or sub-managers to our clients. In
our view, it would be impossible to preserve our objectivity if we were providing both
investment governance functions for our clients and also making introductions to the
investment advisors and managers that we were responsible for auditing. We are prohibited by
contract from ever making introductions or referrals of investment advisors or sub-managers to
our clients.
As an investment governance and auditing consultant, Anodos does not have a particular
investment management process or doctrine that we believe is best. Instead, we help our
clients document their own investment objectives, expectations, and policies. Once the client’s
investment objectives have been defined, we counsel our clients to (1) defer to the good
judgment of their selected investment advisor(s) the implementation of these guidelines; and
(2) take seriously their role to independently confirm that the investment advisor(s) is following
the documented parameters. “Trust, but verify” is our governance maxim.
Our Services
Following is a summary of the services Anodos provides to our clients:
1. Investment Monitoring: Many of our clients delegate management responsibility to
multiple investment managers. For these clients, Anodos provides independent
monitoring of the managers’ activities. Anodos will communicate to these managers
our client’s targeted rate of return, risk expectation, projected distribution rates, and
any other investment policies that our client has adopted. We also coordinate the
activities between these various
managers by arranging and effecting purchases and
sales of securities to accommodate our clients’ investment objectives. Common
examples of these activities include allocation changes between and across managers,
identification of duplicative activities/strategies between managers, tax loss harvesting
across managers, distribution planning across managers, coordination of transaction
execution between managers, etc. For those clients that use this service Anodos
provides a “rollup report” which tracks the performance of each manager against
agreed upon key performance indicators (benchmarks).
2. Trustee Governance Support: Many of our clients are trustees who engaged Anodos to
develop and maintain a fiduciary governance process to ensure that they have fulfilled
each of their fiduciary duties during the administration of the trust. Our Trustee
Governance Support includes trust settlement, trustee compensation studies,
production of the annual account, developing an Investment Policy Statement for the
trust and maintaining the trustee’s compliance library.
3. Investment Advisory Support: Some of our clients have decided to “self-manage” their
marketable securities. These clients engage Anodos to provide Investment Advisory
Support as they directly manage their assets. For these clients we develop an
Investment Policy Statement that is to inform the client’s strategic and tactical
management decisions. Within this service Anodos is responsible for recommending
particular investment securities, suggesting rebalances within the portfolio, identifying
tax loss harvesting opportunities and providing other advisory services for these assets.
Though Anodos does not have authority to execute trades on these assets we are relied
upon to recommend trades that these clients will direct.
4. Financial Planning and Project Management: For some of our clients Anodos provides
financial planning and project management support. For these clients we develop an
online vault into which all important documents are stored for easy reference and
retrieval. Other planning services may include maintenance of the Balance Sheet and
Statement of Projected Cash Flows, maintenance, and updates of estate planning
documents with the client’s estate planning attorney, tax planning and coordination the
client’s CPA, cash flow planning among and between our client’s various investment
managers, continuity support for our client’s family if our client is disabled or dies
unexpectedly, and other complex projects for which our client want our assistance.