Key Takeaways
- • NEPC and Meketa Investment Group lead by mandate volume, with NEPC and Mercer commanding the highest dollar value of closed mandates in 2024, according to With Intelligence's inaugural U.S. Investment Consultants Report.
- • $89 billion in mandates tracked across 1,400 closed deals in 2024, establishing a comprehensive baseline for measuring institutional investment consultant influence and market concentration.
- • Defined benefit funds dominate the consultant advisory landscape, representing 80% of tracked mandates, with endowments, foundations, and trusts comprising 15%, and health plans and sovereign wealth funds accounting for the remaining 5%.
- • Investment consultants function as critical gatekeepers between institutional investors and asset managers, wielding substantial influence over capital allocation decisions for pension funds, university endowments, and other long-term institutional pools.
- • First annual benchmarking report fills measurement gap in an industry historically difficult to quantify, providing institutional investors with data-driven rankings of consultant performance by both mandate volume and dollar value of assets under advisement.
Summary
With Intelligence released its inaugural U.S. Investment Consultants Report on August 7, 2025, establishing the first comprehensive ranking of institutional investment consultants based on quantifiable deal flow and mandate value. The report analyzed 1,400 U.S. investor mandates totaling $89 billion that closed during calendar year 2024, providing institutional investors, hedge funds, and family offices with empirical data to evaluate consultant influence and market positioning.
NEPC and Meketa Investment Group emerged as the top two consultants by mandate volume, while NEPC and Mercer led in terms of total dollar value of closed mandates. This distinction between volume and value metrics reveals differing strategies among top-tier consultants—some specializing in higher-frequency advisory relationships while others focus on larger, more complex institutional mandates. The bifurcated leadership reflects the heterogeneous nature of institutional consulting, where firms compete across multiple dimensions of service delivery.
The mandate composition reveals heavy concentration in defined benefit pension plans, which accounted for 80% of the tracked deals. Treasury funds, permanent funds, endowments, trusts, and foundations represented 15% of mandates, while health plans, sovereign wealth funds, defined benefit/defined contribution cash balance plans, and insurance vehicles comprised the remaining 5%. This distribution underscores the continued centrality of pension fund advisory relationships to investment consulting business models, despite ongoing shifts in institutional investor composition.
Leanna Orr, Director of Allocator Content at With Intelligence, emphasized the significance of the data in contextualizing consultant influence: "Investment consultants have emerged as key figures in the alternative investment strategies of the world's leading institutional investors. But measuring them has always been squishy. Within that rarified group of consultants, our data identified an elite handful delivering billions in investment deals to benefit those clients – the pensioners, students, and workers who depend on their strong returns."
The report addresses a longstanding analytical gap in the alternative investment industry. Investment consultants serve as crucial intermediaries in capital allocation decisions, yet systematic measurement of their market impact and competitive positioning has remained limited. By tracking mandate closures, dollar values, and client asset class preferences, the With Intelligence report provides institutional allocators with transparent benchmarking data to evaluate consultant performance and market concentration within the institutional advisory space.
NEPC and Meketa Investment Group emerged as the top two consultants by mandate volume, while NEPC and Mercer led in terms of total dollar value of closed mandates. This distinction between volume and value metrics reveals differing strategies among top-tier consultants—some specializing in higher-frequency advisory relationships while others focus on larger, more complex institutional mandates. The bifurcated leadership reflects the heterogeneous nature of institutional consulting, where firms compete across multiple dimensions of service delivery.
The mandate composition reveals heavy concentration in defined benefit pension plans, which accounted for 80% of the tracked deals. Treasury funds, permanent funds, endowments, trusts, and foundations represented 15% of mandates, while health plans, sovereign wealth funds, defined benefit/defined contribution cash balance plans, and insurance vehicles comprised the remaining 5%. This distribution underscores the continued centrality of pension fund advisory relationships to investment consulting business models, despite ongoing shifts in institutional investor composition.
Leanna Orr, Director of Allocator Content at With Intelligence, emphasized the significance of the data in contextualizing consultant influence: "Investment consultants have emerged as key figures in the alternative investment strategies of the world's leading institutional investors. But measuring them has always been squishy. Within that rarified group of consultants, our data identified an elite handful delivering billions in investment deals to benefit those clients – the pensioners, students, and workers who depend on their strong returns."
The report addresses a longstanding analytical gap in the alternative investment industry. Investment consultants serve as crucial intermediaries in capital allocation decisions, yet systematic measurement of their market impact and competitive positioning has remained limited. By tracking mandate closures, dollar values, and client asset class preferences, the With Intelligence report provides institutional allocators with transparent benchmarking data to evaluate consultant performance and market concentration within the institutional advisory space.
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