Our Experience
Since our founding in 1979, Willis Investment Counsel has partnered with institutions in the management of their working capital, retirement plans, and other investable assets. WIC has worked with a variety of institutional clients including corporations, foundation and endowment funds, retirement plans, hospital/medical practices, banks, colleges, and captive insurance companies.
For many of our institutional clients, we work directly with corporate management, ensuring that the portfolio is designed to reflect enterprise risk management, liquidity needs, spending policy, and risk tolerance. We also work to ensure the institution/organization’s investment committee remains educated on the portfolio’s investment policy, which is intended to serve as an enduring document to assist in decision-making and portfolio evaluation through long-term market evolution and committee changes.
Whether several of our strategies are combined to complement a client’s portfolio or only one of our strategies is selected for tactical purposes, we design portfolios that place significant emphasis on goals-based investing and enterprise risk-management.
To learn more about our strategies, click here.
Our Capabilities
Risk Management
As students of investor psychology, we believe educating our clients on the ways their portfolio, the markets and investors behave provides confidence and understandability in their long-term plan; particularly during periods of market volatility.
Investment Policy
Developing an investment policy is a collaborative endeavor; including memorializing an appropriately diversified and risk-managed plan while being mindful of cash flow cycles, spending requirements, and overall liquidity needs. Enterprise risk plays a key role in our thinking.
Enterprise Risk Management
We have experience partnering with organizations that require high levels of enterprise risk management planning; ensuring the portfolio is designed to help achieve both short-term and long-term organizational goals, especially related to non-portfolio risks.
BALANCE SHEET ASSESSMENT
For many clients, we help them develop a holistic report that consolidates the various components of their organization’s assets; including investment portfolio(s), real estate, and other valuable, tangible assets.
Liquidity Planning
When determining asset allocation, it is crucial that we understand what kind of liquidity requirements exist and understand potential cash flow shortage risks through stress-tests; providing assurance that we will not have to sell securities at an inopportune time.
Tax Planning
We are mindful of the tax impact on our clients’ portfolios. Reflecting the overall tax posture and guidance of their CPA, we engage in tax-loss-harvesting to reduce the tax impact of realized capital gains; to maximize long-term gains vs. short-term gains; to minimize turnover; and to consider use of tax-free bonds.
