OCIO: What It Is & Why It Matters
If you have meaningful wealth, your biggest risk is almost never “Apple vs Microsoft.”
It is the quality of the decisions that sit above the securities: how your portfolio integrates with your tax reality, cash flow needs, entity structure, liquidity constraints, and the risks you already carry elsewhere, such as business ownership, real estate, and concentrated positions.
We started using an OCIO lens because I kept seeing the same problem in private wealth: smart people with substantial assets, but no single framework governing the total system.
That is what an institutional-quality advisor is meant to solve: a repeatable decision framework that holds up through cycles.
What is an OCIO?
OCIO stands for Outsourced Chief Investment Officer.
Think of it as hiring an institutional investment office without building one in-house.
An OCIO is responsible for the same functions a pension plan CIO runs, including:
• Investment policy and governance
• Strategic asset allocation
• Manager selection and due diligence
• Portfolio implementation across vehicles (SMAs, ETFs, mutual funds, private markets)
• Rebalancing and risk oversight
• Ongoing monitoring as conditions change
In other words, a repeatable decision system, not stock picks.
Why the OCIO approach is gaining traction in serious wealth
The wealth management industry is moving toward more institutional processes. Clients want better structure, better transparency, and better decision support.
At the same time, real-world portfolios are more complex than they were a decade ago.
If you are a business owner with a holdco, RRSP, TFSA, spousal account, and a private equity commitment, you do not need a stock picker. You need an investment office that can see the whole picture: tax considerations across entities, cash flow requirements, private market alternatives alongside public markets, and integrated oversight at the total portfolio level.
That complexity rewards process and discipline.
The hard truth: stock picking is a different full-time job
There is nothing wrong with active security selection. It is a legitimate discipline.
But it is a different full-time job, and it is only one input in a much larger system.
Even if you could pick a few winners, it often does not move the needle relative to the decisions that actually drive outcomes:
• Your asset mix and risk exposure
• Your manager roster, and how those managers behave under stress
• Your implementation across fees, taxes, vehicles, liquidity, and rebalancing discipline
• Your own behavior as an investor
Over time, process and discipline tend to matter more than brilliance.
OCIO is a standard, not a label
The OCIO label is becoming popular. The issue is that “OCIO” can mean anything from a true investment office to a marketing refresh.
Here are five practical tests you can use to tell the difference. If you cannot verify the infrastructure, you are trusting the story.
1) Open architecture
Can your advisor select across a broad universe, including SMAs, ETFs, mutual funds, and private markets, or is the portfolio effectively assembled from a narrow shelf?
The easiest tell is repetition. When the “best solution” is repeatedly the same in-house or preferred lineup, you are not seeing open architecture. You are seeing distribution constraints.
2) Transparency at the total-portfolio level
Can your advisor show aggregate exposures and all-in costs across every account and entity you own?
Most families cannot. That is how overlap hides. A common example is the same handful of mega-cap exposures showing up across multiple managers, plus index exposure layered on top. Unintended concentration dressed up as diversification.
If you have ever held more than one manager plus a few ETFs, this is worth checking. It is common to find meaningful overlap in the largest positions even when the account statements look “diversified.”
3) Incentives you can actually understand
The cleanest model is simple: the client pays the advisor, and that is the primary economic relationship guiding decisions.
It is reasonable to ask whether any third-party compensation exists within the platform or product structures you use. That does not automatically make a recommendation wrong, but it makes clarity non-negotiable. The standard should be that your advisor can explain incentives plainly and show you how they are managed.
If the answer is unclear, ask for the disclosure and fee schedule in writing.
4) Scale and access that shows up in implementation
Institutional manager access, preferred pricing, capacity in sought-after strategies, and implementation flexibility are often a function of platform relationships and scale.
If your advisor cannot access the same terms, you may be paying more for less without realizing it. This is one practical reason larger platforms can add value through broader manager access, negotiating power, and deeper due diligence coverage.
5) Governance that holds through cycles
A real OCIO has a documented, repeatable process for due diligence, monitoring, making changes, managing risk, and communicating decisions, especially when markets are ugly.
Without governance, you do not have an investment office. You have opinions.
How we build and govern portfolios
Here is what we believe, and how we operate in practice.
Planning precedes products. We start with your goals, constraints, liquidity needs, tax realities, and risk exposures. The portfolio serves the plan, not the other way around.
Portfolio construction is the core craft. We use the best tool for each job: SMAs for precision, tax management, and specialist mandates; ETFs where markets are efficient and cost matters; mutual funds when a mandate is best delivered in a fund structure; and private market alternatives when they fit the objective, liquidity budget, and diversification plan. The vehicle follows the purpose.
Manager selection is a discipline, not a default. Great portfolios are built from great underlying building blocks, selected through institutional due diligence and continuously monitored. That means global research, product-agnostic selection, and ongoing oversight, not a shelf that never changes.
Risk is managed at the total balance sheet level. Most affluent families hold significant wealth outside their investment portfolio: real estate, private businesses, private equity commitments, deferred compensation, or concentrated equity positions. A portfolio built in isolation from those exposures is not truly risk-managed. Our approach considers the full family balance sheet so the investable portfolio complements and offsets the risks already embedded in the broader picture, rather than unknowingly doubling down.
The goal is simple: a portfolio that is understood, coordinated, and governed.
The multi-advisor trap
Spreading investments across several firms feels like diversification. In practice, it often creates the opposite.
Without a single point of coordination, portfolios held at different firms tend to drift toward overlapping exposures. You may end up owning the same underlying positions, sectors, or risk factors multiple times over without realizing it. Each firm builds to their own model. Nobody is responsible for the aggregate.
The costs compound as well. Multiple advisory fees, duplicate custodial charges, and redundant reporting layers add friction. The administrative weight of consolidating statements, coordinating tax reporting across firms, and keeping multiple advisors aligned on your evolving goals is real time and energy that produces no incremental return.
Example: we recently reviewed a family with assets split across three firms. On paper it looked diversified, but in aggregate their top ten holdings and risk factors overlapped heavily, and they were paying layered fees across accounts without a consolidated view. The bigger issue was governance. Nobody owned the total portfolio, so concentration and liquidity risk were growing quietly in the background.
The instinct to spread assets is understandable. But the better question is whether you have the right advisor, not whether you have enough of them. A truly capable OCIO already diversifies across asset classes, geographies, managers, and vehicles within a single governed framework. Adding more firms does not reduce risk. It fragments oversight.
The goal is not more advisors. It is better architecture.
Two questions worth asking:
1. “Are you running my wealth like a portfolio, or like an investment office?”
2. “Can you show me my true exposures and total costs across every account and entity I own?”
The difference between the answers you get may reveal whether you have a partner or a product channel.
If you want a second opinion, we can map your portfolio’s aggregate exposures, overlap, and fee layers, then show what an OCIO-grade framework could look like across both public and private markets.
Please feel to send us a DM directly to start the conversation.
Jamison McAuley, CFA | Portfolio Manager & Wealth Advisor | McAuley Wealth | RBC Dominion Securities Inc.
Direct: 604.665.4004 | 1055 West Georgia St – 32nd Floor | McAuleyRBC.com
Wealth Advisory • Portfolio Management • Tax and Estate Coordination • Philanthropy
If someone you care about is facing a business sale, retirement transition, or concentrated stock position, we're happy to be a resource. A planning-first conversation usually brings clarity.
This information is not investment advice and should be used only in conjunction with a discussion with your RBC Dominion Securities Inc. Investment Advisor. This will ensure that your own circumstances have been considered properly and that action is taken on the latest available information. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time obtained but neither RBC Dominion Securities Inc. nor its employees, agents, or information suppliers can guarantee its accuracy or completeness. This report is not and under no circumstances is to be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. This report is furnished on the basis and understanding that neither RBC Dominion Securities Inc. nor its employees, agents, or information suppliers is to be under any responsibility or liability whatsoever in respect thereof. The inventories of RBC Dominion Securities Inc. may from time to time include securities mentioned herein. RBC Dominion Securities Inc.* and Royal Bank of Canada are separate corporate entities which are affiliated. *Member-Canadian Investor Protection Fund. RBC Dominion Securities Inc. is a member company of RBC Wealth Management, a business segment of Royal Bank of Canada. ®Registered trademarks of Royal Bank of Canada. Used under license. © 2026 RBC Dominion Securities Inc. All rights reserved.