Endowment Director Ryan Lee told the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Committee on Investment and Land Management that the Native Hawaiian Trust Fund returned 0.48% for the quarter ending March 31, 2025, a result he said “outperformed the policy benchmark that was flat.”

Trustees asked detailed questions about manager performance, fees and asset-allocation strategy during a presentation that reviewed market conditions, portfolio positioning and private-markets commitments.

The trust’s quarterly briefing covered global market drivers and portfolio effects before summarizing the fund’s results. “This slide covers the Native Hawaiian Trust performance for the quarter. Now trust fund returned 0.48%, so about half a percent, outperformed the policy benchmark that was flat,” Endowment Director Ryan Lee said during the presentation.

Lee said non-U.S. public equities and real assets were key contributors to the quarter’s gains, while an underweight to fixed-income duration modestly detracted. He told trustees the portfolio remains within policy ranges and reiterated that the board approved both short-term and long-term policy targets effective January 2025; the long-term target for private markets is 19% while the current short-term target is 11% as the fund builds private-market exposure.

Lee described recent private-markets activity: the board-approved commitment budget for the year-to-date stood at $45,000,000 with capital calls totaling about $11,500,000, and the fund had made commitments to two new managers identified in the presentation as “Client Hill Partners” and “Invest Partners,” plus continued exposure to Peters Hill Partners (described in the packet as an existing manager associated with Goldman Sachs). He also said the trust had distributed roughly $75,000,000 for operations in the period covered by the report and that marketable-investment activity included transitions in manager structure and liquidity moves to fund operations and capital calls.

Trustee Whitehead pressed for clearer measures of manager performance and asked whether trustees could obtain the information needed to judge whether to retain or reuse existing manager-of-managers relationships. “I never was able to get information on... how much money they actually earn for us from the time they're... started them as manager of managers,” Trustee Whitehead said, adding that trustees can benchmark managers to assess value added.

Lee replied that the ongoing re-underwriting and manager-review process allows staff to “slice and dice” the roster and benchmark managers to their categories; he recommended an annual, year-end review of asset allocation to reflect evolving market conditions.

No formal action or vote on asset-allocation changes or manager terminations was taken at the meeting; the session was a quarterly informational briefing and trustees posed questions for staff follow-up.

The committee then moved on to the next agenda item after a short question-and-answer period.