The Teacher Retirement System of Texas committed $250 million to seed a NISA Investment Advisors LLC quantitative equity strategy for institutional investors, the firm announced Monday, led by a quant team that NISA brought over from Texas TRS last year.
The systematic, alpha-seeking, quantitative equity extension strategy is led by R. Mohan Balachandran, NISA’s head of quantitative equity who was previously head of the multi-asset strategies group at TRS, where he oversaw internal quant equity and quant macro strategies at the pension fund until 2025.
In 2025, Clayton, Missouri-based NISA—named for predecessor company National Investment Services of America—hired several quant equity investors from Texas TRS, including Balachandran, Kyle Schmidt, Ryan Leary, Eddie Pluhar and Peter Ryumgaart.
Texas TRS managed $225.3 billion in assets for more than 2 million members as of August 31, 2025.
“We’ve built this strategy to seek to capture persistent structural inefficiencies across equity markets while maintaining beta and tracking error targets, offering institutional investors a scalable, risk-controlled source of equity alpha,” Balachandran said in a statement. “We aim to deliver a consistent and repeatable source of excess returns across market environments.”
The strategy is intended for public and corporate pension funds, endowments and other institutional allocators seeking systematic equity strategies within a disciplined risk framework, according to a statement from NISA. The strategy complements NISA’s quantitative equity market neutral strategy, which launched in November 2025.
The partnership comes amidst increased institutional interest in quantitative strategies, noted NISA CEO David Eichorn in a statement.
David Blitz, chief researcher for Robeco’s quant equity research team, agrees institutional investors may be in the best position to venture into quantitative strategies.
“We’ve seen a lot of interest from institutional investors in quant [strategies],” Blitz says. “Maybe for retail investors [or] private investors, quant is a bit black boxy, but in the institutional community … people understand these concepts, and people also observe that [quant] performance has been strong and consistent.”
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Tags: NISA Investment Advisors, Texas Teacher Retirement System (TRS)