​​Institutional finance can be thought of as the firms that offer services to large pools of money such as endowment funds, pension funds, hedge funds, venture capital funds, private equity funds, commercial banks, mutual funds, and insurance companies. Institutional finance clients are typically not individuals so by default this means that retail finance clients are. 

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How the two areas differ from each other is not restricted to just the client type. The services that each group is offered are a major differentiator as well.

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As we have detailed in other parts of our website, central to our approach to wealth management is our strategy of convex portfolio execution. This strategy is more likely to be offered to institutional clients than to retail. So, the investment strategy that we provide to our clients is one way that we offer an institutional experience, but it's not the only way.

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Another very important way is cost, or fees. Because institutions are such large clients (as measured by assets under management), the amount of fees that the pay is far less than what retail clients pay. This is because fees are often a percentage of the assets under management, so if the assets are very large the fee does not have to be and the manager is still able to invoice a large fee. 

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The combination of our investment strategy and the reduced level of fees that our clients benefit from is what we refer to as institutional investor treatment and exclusive service and benefits.