What is a consultant database?

In a consultant database, an investment consultant searches the asset managers it lists and picks the strategies that fit an institutional investor's mandate. The term belongs to asset management; elsewhere it can mean a directory of consulting firms, or be confused with a database consultant in IT.

Who runs consultant databases and how managers join

An investment consultant runs the database itself or subscribes to one. Such a consultant is a firm that advises institutional investors, such as pension funds, on how to invest, including which asset managers to hire.

Consultant databases are plural by nature. Callan and Albourne each run their own, so a manager that wants to be found by both holds a profile in each. Callan calls its own manager database CallanDNA.

Joining starts with the manager. Callan invites asset managers to join CallanDNA. Once a manager has login access, it submits detailed information about the firm and its investment products itself. Albourne works through a web portal, MoatSpace, where managers submit fund data and questionnaires.

The profile holds what the manager submits, though a consultant may also draw on the manager's other communications.

What a manager's profile holds

A profile has two levels: the firm and each strategy it offers. A strategy is an investment approach the manager runs as a distinct product, such as a global equity or a fixed income strategy. Its track record is the history of returns that strategy has produced over time.

Callan's inclusion request makes the strategy the unit. A manager names the strategy and a contact person for the database or questionnaire, and that person then receives access to the questionnaire.

The content mixes narrative and numbers. Wilshire's Compass Portal asks about the manager's investment process, investment philosophy and key organisational characteristics, alongside quantitative data. That data covers returns, assets under management (AUM), representative holdings-level detail and other performance metrics. Much of it can be uploaded from Excel.

The narrative and the numbers both have to stay current as each new period's data arrives. A process description written once can sit for a long time. A returns table goes out of date as soon as the next period closes.

The consultant reads the profile at more than one moment. Callan describes its manager questionnaire as a primary source for its search process and ongoing due diligence.

Where a consultant database sits in a manager search

In some manager searches the database is the first filter, ahead of any RFP or DDQ. In such a search, a consultant screens it for managers whose strategies meet the search's requirements, and the RFP goes to the managers it long-lists.

A 2025 notice for a US public pension fund's manager search shows that order. Managers had to enter their information in named consultant databases to be considered. The investment consultants then reviewed those databases and reported which managers met the minimum requirements. In that search, a manager absent from the databases was not considered. The notice reflects one buyer's practice in one search, not a general rule.

How much weight the screen carries depends on how far investors rely on consultants. Research by Crisil Coalition Greenwich found that 85% of US institutional asset owners use investment consultants for help with manager selection, among other services. The research covers 698 individuals at 573 of the largest US tax-exempt funds, interviewed between February and September 2025.

Both sources describe the US. Neither measures how much consultant databases count in manager searches in Europe or elsewhere.

How a profile changes when a portfolio manager leaves

A portfolio manager's departure changes the same facts in every database profile, open RFP response and DDQ that names that person. The case below is illustrative, built to show the mechanics, and describes no real manager.

An asset manager runs an equity strategy listed in several consultant databases, and the strategy's lead portfolio manager leaves the firm. In each database that lists the strategy, the team fields change. These include the named portfolio managers, their biographies and who now holds decision-making authority. Where the investment process description names the departed manager, that text changes too.

The same facts sit in work already in progress. An open RFP response that presents the departed manager as lead now needs the successor. A DDQ answer on the team and key people needs the same revision. A profile that still names the old lead, beside a response that names the new one, puts two versions of the team in front of the same consultant.

Some consultants say they watch for this change. Albourne says it reviews investor letters and other communications from managers. It may follow up with a manager on key changes such as staff departures.

DeMarche, another investment consultant, treats an unexpected, uncommunicated material departure as the worst kind. Its December 2024 paper gives an anonymised case. A change in a lead portfolio manager's authority put a strategy on watch, and a heightened review followed.