Headquartered in St. Louis, NISA Investment Advisors is a fee-only firm. The financial advisor primarily offers investment advisory services to pooled investment vehicles and businesses, but it also serves various other institutional clients.
This firm does not offer services for individual investors. If you’re looking for a firm that does, SmartAsset’s free financial advisor matching service can help you find the best option.
NISA Investment Advisors Background
NISA was founded in 1994 by Jess Yawitz and Bill Marshall. Its CEO is David G. Eichhorn. The firm is a subsidiary of NISA, LLC, and it is 100% employee-owned.
NISA manages assets on a fully or partially discretionary basis, and it specializes in the following investment sectors: domestic high-grade fixed income, domestic publicly traded equity, international high-grade fixed income, international publicly traded equity. It also focuses on synthetic exposure to domestic and international equity, fixed income, currency and commodity markets.
NISA offers services for completion and custom credit mandates, asset and liability management, rebalancing policy and stable value wrap selection and administration.
NISA Investment Advisors Client Types and Minimum Account Sizes
As mentioned earlier, NISA only provides advisory services to institutional clients. These include pension and profit sharing plans, nuclear decommissioning trusts, state and government entities, insurance companies, charitable organizations and endowments, corporations, nonprofits, investment vehicles, financial institutions and other financial advisors.
NISA doesn’t require a minimum account size.
Services Offered by NISA Investment Advisors
NISA offers the following services, strategies and solutions:
- Portfolio management
- Asset/liability management
- Rebalancing policy
- Stable value wrap selection/administration
- Asset classes
- Long duration bonds
- Short and core duration bonds
- Derivatives
- Equity assets
- Strategies and solutions
- Risk-controlled fixed income
- Pension risk management
- Derivative overlay
- Defined contribution
- Tax sensitive portfolio management
NISA Investment Advisors Investment Philosophy
NISA touts on its website that it strives to maintain client asset growth through large, liability-aware and risk-controlled portfolios. The firm says it also welcomes discussions with clients so that it can expand its investment approach to new markets and investment products.
The firm employs a range of strategies in its investment process, including yield curve positioning, sector selection, security selection and trading strategies.
Fees Under NISA Investment Advisors
Fees for portfolio management are generally based on the market value of a client’s account. But fees for synthetic exposure and other portfolios are based on different measures which serve to compensate NISA advisors. Fees are negotiable, and the firm usually requires a minimum quarterly or annual fee.
| NISA Investment Advisors Fee Schedule | ||
| Portfolio | Amount of Assets | Annual Management Fee |
| Fixed-Income - U.S. Government | First $500,000,000 | 0.10% |
| Fixed-Income - Credit | First $100,000,000 | 0.225% |
| Fixed-Income - Aggregate Index | First $500,000,000 | 0.15% |
| Completion - Treasury Beta | First $500,000,000 | 0.125% |
| Completion - Active Credit | First $100,000,000 | 0.225% |
| Custom Credit | First $100,000,000 | 0.225% |
| Synthetic Exposure | First $500,000,000 | 0.06% |
| Equity | First $100,000,000 | 0.20% |
The firm may also charge performance-based fees, and clients will incur expenses for any additional investment management or ancillary services provided by Nisa. The fee on the balance afterward is negotiable.
What to Watch Out For
NISA Investment Advisors doesn’t have any disclosures on its legal and regulatory record.
This firm mainly charges asset-based fees for portfolio management, but it also charges performance-based fees. This may create an opportunity for advisors to favor performance-based accounts over asset-based accounts because higher portfolio returns would increase advisor compensation. Though the firm has a fiduciary duty to clients, it’s still useful to consider this.
Opening an Account With NISA Investment Advisors
The firm does not offer advisory services for individual clients. If you work with or know of an institution that may be interested in NISA's services, the firm offers a contact page and an office number.
All information is accurate as of the writing of this article.
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