Q

Mercer is known as a trusted adviser – how can you help a wealth management business?

A

Mercer has been advising a wide range of organisations on their many varied needs for more than 75 years. We are primarily a people business and our focus is on working with clients to achieve their own specific goals. We also provide our clients with investment strategy design and operational expertise, offered by  specialist teams around the world. This enables our financial services clients to benefit from our scale and experience to add value within their own organisations.

As a people business, our first job is to take the time to listen to what you need. We strive to understand the specific issues each client faces, both now and in the future, partnering with them to create a tailored solution that focuses on their long-term goals and shorter-term pressures. We also recognise that things can change quickly, so draw on our experience to build a solution that can flex with them over time.
 

Secondly, we are impartial, with no ties to any particular provider. Thanks to our heritage as an institutional investment consultant, we have built a research capability that covers a wide global range of managers spanning every asset class, including private and illiquid portfolios. We select managers solely on quality and monitor them for shifts in strategy and operational failings.

This allows us to construct and implement portfolios, designed by our strategy and asset allocation specialists, which are based on diversification, risk management and have the nimbleness to try to exploit opportunities as they arise. Our scale helps us to negotiate potential discounts on manager fees, which are passed directly to our clients.

Finally, our strong operational platform and tested continuity plans help our clients to function in times of crisis and help ensure their own clients continue to receive the service they expect.

Q

What are Investment Solutions and how can they help wealth managers serve their clients better?

A

Across our wide range of clients, we know keeping on track to achieve investment goals is a priority, and through our Investment Solutions products and services, we have helped them to reassure their own clients over the last few turbulent months. Our Investment Solutions product suite contains a range of core building blocks that wealth managers and private banks can employ to help deliver quality service to their clients. These building blocks start at institutional level strategy design and full market manager research, and stretch through to portfolio monitoring and communication, covering every step of your client’s investment journey.
 

Using our sophisticated operational platform, our dedicated, experienced teams can also support wealth managers on timely implementation and oversight tasks. We can help get you to market quickly with new ideas and execute investors’ wishes fast, meaning your assets get to work quickly.
 

Our Investment Solutions platform brings the power, reach and efficiency of Mercer’s global footprint to wealth managers of any size and sophistication around the world.

Q

Does everyone get the same package?

A

From large, global banks to small, independent advisory firms, we help many businesses increase efficiency, pursue reduced cost, and seek better outcomes for their clients. But we understand that every business is different, which is why Investment Solutions offers a suite of products and services, and we invite you to select only the ones you need to deliver the most value for your clients.
 

Within Investment Solutions, we have designated four key function areas that each contain a range of options that can flex according to your changing needs.
 

These include strategy and proposition design, oversight and governance, manager selection and client communication – all of which we can seek at an institutional standard. However, many of our clients rely on our skill in blending asset classes and highly-rated managers to create a portfolio combination that is in line with your objectives. We can also implement these allocation decisions quickly, through our own internal platforms, enabling your clients’ assets to start working. By outsourcing these key elements, wealth managers of any size around the world can benefit from our experience, skills and vast, global market coverage – all while keeping their costs down. We work with each client individually to help ensure everything we provide is in line with their outlook and needs, allowing them to move swiftly and serve their own clients well.

Q

Clients are asking about ESG – how can you help me with that?

A

Environmental, social and governance investing is an important theme for investors, and there are several ways we support wealth managers to help them to allocate in this way. Mercer was one of the first consultants to explore and implement ESG factors into our investment research and decisions, a pioneering position we are proud to continue to hold. We have advised the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and continue to support other leading global organisations to find solutions to developing, international concerns.
 

Thanks to our background of pioneering on ESG, clients using our Investment Solutions products and services can benefit from our expertise to help their own investor base.
 

We boast a research team that is dedicated to exploring and developing ESG themes, including risks and opportunities that could significantly impact client portfolios. This team is backed up by our global manager research group, who analyse and rank the managers who Mercer believes are the best in this field.
 

From designing an investment portfolio that focuses on how ESG themes are likely to influence the global economy helping to ensure managers are sticking to their claims, our team can help shape how you serve your investors to meet their evolving ESG needs.