Bob Doll joins Crossmark as chief investment officer

The veteran market strategist will lead the faith-based firm’s investment team and will be responsible for growing its investment offerings, specifically focusing on several new actively managed products.

Financial services industry vet Bob Doll, formerly of Nuveen Asset Management and BlackRock Inc., has joined a faith-based boutique investment firm, Crossmark Global Investments, as chief investment officer.

Doll, 66, who has worked in investment management for 42 years, will lead Crossmark’s investment team and will be responsible for growing the firm’s investment offerings, specifically focusing on several new actively managed products.

As a part of Houston, Texas-based Crossmark’s ongoing expansion, Doll will open a new office branch in Princeton, New Jersey. He will report directly to Mike Kern, president and CEO of Crossmark, and work alongside chief market strategist Victoria Fernandez. Crossmark was founded in 1987 and managed $5.5 billion in assets as of March.

“This part of the investment world is not huge, there are only a handful of firms, but it is growing rapidly, which is part of the excitement,” Doll said in an interview. “Crossmark has been around for a while and, as a result, is a well-built-out platform.”

Crossmark has mutual funds, separately managed accounts, equities and fixed income, and active and passive products, Doll said. “Most firms, because they’re younger and newer, are more limited, so I like the breadth of the platform.”

Over the last 30 years, Doll has been known for his popular set of 10 annual predictions, which will help Crossmark’s clients navigate through market cycles and construct portfolios to meet their values and long-term goals.

Doll said he has no new predictions for 2021 and has no plans to change his predictions now that he’s with a faith-based investment firm.

“Market views aren’t going away just because I’m at a faith-based firm,” he said. “We’ve still got interest rates, earnings and the stock market like you see them. The way we apply it to our portfolios may be a bit different, but people think when you’re creating values-based portfolios, you do things so differently from a non-values based portfolio, and the truth is there’s tons of overlap.”

His weekly investment commentary will live on the Crossmark Global Investments website as “Doll’s Deliberations,” according to the announcement. Doll will continue to share his 10 annual predictions at the start of every year, he said.

As for new content, Doll said he has a goal to publish six to eight white papers per year, some on general subject matters and some focused more on faith-based investing.

Doll joins Crossmark just three months after announcing his departure from Nuveen, where he managed $2.5 billion across several large-cap strategies as senior portfolio manager and chief equity analyst.

Prior to joining Nuveen, Doll held similar roles at other large asset management firms, including serving as chief equity strategist at BlackRock, president and chief investment officer at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and chief investment officer at Oppenheimer Funds.