Jenny Heller

CIO of Brandywine Trust Group, advocating for a tax-efficient, long-term investment philosophy.

Claims

As speaker

Mentioned in

Key positions and views

Managing taxable assets is the single most important constraint, creating a high performance hurdle and mandating an extremely long-term investment horizon.

The best investment opportunities often come from seeding or anchoring small, niche, and durable managers, even if it requires a multi-decade commitment.

Manager culture and team dynamics are more critical long-term success factors than the cleverness or complexity of a strategy, a lesson learned from a significant past investment mistake.

New, potentially disruptive asset classes like cryptocurrency should be approached cautiously through small, manager-led 'learning investments' focused on technological use cases rather than speculative trading.

The insurance asset class represents a rare potential opportunity for uncorrelated, semi-liquid returns that can meet a high post-tax return bar.

Podcast consensus on Heller

Points of consensus

▶Both the 2017 and 2021 sources emphasize that Brandywine's status as a manager of taxable assets is the primary driver of its investment philosophy, mandating an extremely long-term horizon and creating a high performance hurdle for active managers.Apr 2026

▶Across both time periods, Heller highlights a consistent strategy of identifying and backing niche or emerging managers, including providing seed capital to a now-major global equity manager and anchoring a small healthcare fund.Apr 2026

▶The principle of using passive investing as the 'break-even' hurdle rate that any active strategy must outperform after taxes and fees is a foundational concept mentioned in both the 2017 and 2021 discussions.Apr 2026

▶Heller consistently describes a focus on long-term, durable strategies and managers, explicitly avoiding short-term tactical opportunities and maintaining an average manager holding period of over 11 years.Apr 2026

Points of debate

▶The provided claims, all from Jenny Heller, do not present direct disagreements. Instead, they show an evolution in articulated investment processes and areas of focus over time.Apr 2026

▶The 2021 discussion introduces new, specific areas of investment research not mentioned in 2017, such as deep dives into the insurance asset class and cryptocurrency, suggesting an expansion of the firm's opportunistic search for uncorrelated returns.Apr 2026

▶While the core philosophy remains consistent, the 2021 claims articulate a more formalized and granular due diligence process, detailing specific tools like the Annie Duke-inspired scoring framework, Key Diligence Indicators (KDIs), and a 'second' team member check, which were not detailed in 2017.

▶The 2021 commentary on cryptocurrency reflects a new willingness to make small, educational investments in nascent, high-tech sectors, framing it as analogous to the early internet—a perspective and asset class not discussed in the 2017 source.

Key themes

▶Tax-Driven Long-TermismApr 2026

Jenny Heller's core investment philosophy is dictated by the tax implications for Brandywine's clients. This constraint necessitates an exceptionally long-term horizon, as redeeming from a manager can mean reinvesting a '75 or 80 cent dollar' after capital gains taxes, creating an annual performance hurdle of 150-200 basis points for any active strategy.

Analysts should recognize that for Heller, tax efficiency is not a secondary optimization but the primary strategic filter, making manager tenure and low turnover non-negotiable attributes rather than mere preferences.

▶Disciplined & Evolving Investment ProcessApr 2026

Heller describes a highly structured yet flexible investment process managed by a team of generalists. Key components include 'deep dives' into areas of interest, a scoring framework that forces non-neutral opinions, early investment committee engagement, and a final decision resting with Heller and the lead MD.

This process balances individual intellectual curiosity with institutional checks and balances, aiming to leverage the expertise of the entire team without being paralyzed by consensus-seeking.

▶Opportunistic Seeding and Niche Strategies

Heller demonstrates a clear preference for finding value in less crowded spaces by backing smaller, specialized managers. This includes providing foundational seed capital to a manager over 20 years ago, anchoring a first-time healthcare fund focused on sub-institutional-sized companies, and exploring niche asset classes like the Lloyd's insurance market.

Heller's strategy suggests a belief that true alpha is found by taking on liquidity and scale risk, acting as a strategic partner to nascent managers rather than just an allocator to established ones.

▶Cautious Exploration of New FrontiersApr 2026

When approaching novel asset classes like cryptocurrency, Heller advocates for a measured, educational approach. Brandywine made a small, 'venture size' investment through an external manager, focusing on the long-term technological potential of Web 3.0 rather than speculating on short-term price volatility or its function as a store of value.

This approach allows the firm to gain exposure and understanding of potentially disruptive technologies without compromising its core principles of long-term, tax-efficient investing, treating the small capital outlay as the price of admission to a new ecosystem.

Source episodes

Timeline

Approx. 1992

Brandywine Trust Group is deliberately established as a trust company by four founding families to ensure a multi-generational approach to wealth management.

Approx. 1997-2000

Brandywine provides seed capital to an investment manager who, over two decades later, manages the largest portion of the firm's global equity portfolio.

2008

Heller founds an informal professional network for investment directors, which grows from 13 to over 100 members.

2017

In a podcast appearance, Heller outlines Brandywine's foundational investment philosophy, emphasizing its tax-driven, long-term approach, the use of passive benchmarks as hurdles, and its history of seeding managers.

2021

Heller details a more formalized investment process and discusses new areas of research, including a 'deep dive' into cryptocurrency that resulted in a small investment and a multi-year exploration of the insurance asset class.

Suggested prompts

How does Brandywine's tax-sensitive mandate influence its manager selection criteria and holding periods compared to tax-exempt institutions like endowments? &nearr;What are the key risks and benefits of Brandywine's 'deep dive' research model, and how has it tangibly impacted portfolio construction beyond the crypto and QSR examples? &nearr;Given the final investment decision rests with Jenny Heller and the lead MD, how does the firm ensure the generalist team's diverse perspectives are fully integrated and potential groupthink is avoided? &nearr;How might Brandywine's strategy of seeding and anchoring smaller, niche managers evolve as those managers grow and potentially become less capacity-constrained? &nearr;

Key concepts

Brandywine Trust Group 49 ep Investment Process & Due Diligence 11 ep Tax Efficiency 5 ep Long-Term Investing 4 ep Manager Selection & Seeding 5 ep Deep Dives 6 ep Cryptocurrency 6 ep Insurance Asset Class 4 ep Portfolio Construction 4 ep

Notable quotes

“we are managing taxable money. And that means that the cost of wrong decisions is really high. Because if we redeem from a manager, we're often reinvesting a 75 or 80 cent dollar.”

Jenny Heller · CIO Greatest Hits: Multi-Family Offices - Jenny Heller (Brandywine Trust Group, 2017)

“In one case, over 20 years ago, we put a manager in business and it's still the largest part of our global equity portfolio.”

Jenny Heller · CIO Greatest Hits: Multi-Family Offices - Jenny Heller (Brandywine Trust Group, 2017)

“we invested in a manager that was sort of a tax scheme, and it seemed very clever...And we missed some real basics on a broken culture and team dynamics and research dynamics that were very, very broken at an organization that were what ended up really hurting the firm in the long term.”

Jenny Heller · CIO Greatest Hits: Multi-Family Offices - Jenny Heller (Brandywine Trust Group, 2021)

Report last updated: Apr 21, 2026

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