The Barlow Endowment Index, or BEI, is a composite benchmark comprised of 9 globally recognized indices in Barlow's 6 asset class categories: Cash, Fixed Income, Global Equity, Absolute Return, Real Assets, and Private Capital.
Over the last few years, the endowment model of asset allocation has gained popularity among increasing numbers of private and institutional investors. However, the lack of a representative benchmark has ensured that accurate performance measurement and evaluation has remained a difficult task, made even more challenging by the fact that few institutions report performance on a regular basis or disclose individual asset class returns. The BEI was created in response to this opacity and is designed to replicate investment performance of the aggregate group of North American endowment and foundation investment pools with an excess of $1 billion under management.
The Barlow Endowment Index utilizes data from over 750 public and private institutions in North America, categorized by investment pool size, to derive its aggregate asset class weightings. This asset mix is rebalanced on an annual basis in January of each year. The BEI is calculated quarterly on a currency neutral basis. The Index is maintained by the Barlow Capital Investment Strategy Committee whose membership includes Portfolio Managers, Analysts, Directors and Compliance Officers. It follows a set of published rules that provide transparent methodologies used to maintain the index.
BEI HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Historical
20.43%
12.42%
8.89%
15.49%
9.51%
-29.92%
Q1
Q2*
Q3
Q4
Current
-6.60%
12.74%
CAGR%
ST Dev
Inception
3.23%
18.18%
* 2009 Q2 BEI Returns are preliminary at this timebased on reported performance for 7 of the 9 asset class indices. Values above do not reflect Q2 2009 returns to Private Equity and Venture Capital indices, which are published on a 3-month lag. Q1 2009 performance was recently revised upward from -6.81% to -6.60%.
