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Prepare yourself and your portfolio today to stay on top of whatever lies ahead
Building resilience can help improve outcomes and keep you focused on your objectives. This is why we make this a critical focus throughout our clients’ investment journey. We help you build resilience by implementing a robust governance framework to streamline decision-making and assign tasks to dedicated teams. Lifting this wide range of technical and operational burdens frees up your time, so that you can concentrate on what’s important to you, and allows experienced partners to pursue investment opportunities efficiently and cost-efficiently.
While we believe this framework should be the foundation from which all investors forge their objective, strategy and portfolio, it is an important tool throughout the investor journey, too. This framework gives you ready access to the standardized information you need to stay on top of your risks and exposures – especially in uncertain times – and helps you manage the broad spectrum of fees and costs that accompany running a sophisticated portfolio.
“Emotions run high around large political events, so it is important as investors we concentrate on where the meaningful differences will come after any immediate volatility subsides….” Rupert Watson, Head of asset allocation, UK & Europe
Our investment solutions team reflect and provide their views on the US election.
Private markets are becoming increasingly popular as investors shift parts of their portfolios from publicly traded assets to diversify their risk and return drivers. The opportunities in private markets span many sectors and regions, each offering something different. Yet they all share the qualities of being shielded from much public market volatility and having the potential to earn a premium by being held over the long term.
However, accessing managers that invest in private markets can be challenging for some investors – this is where Mercer can help. We have been investing in these markets for more than 25 years, establishing deep relationships with a wide universe of high-rated managers. Our dedicated alternatives group of over 180 professionals across 20 global locations, work on GBP 234bn of alternatives advisory mandates for clients - GBP 16,8bn of assets being under direct implementation.2
“Whether building and implementing a flight path towards full funding or selecting and regularly monitoring an asset manager, we design what our clients want and give them full oversight and control of how we execute it.
We also enable our clients to quickly adapt and adjust when they need to.”
Dan Melley, Head of UK Fiduciary Management
Fiduciary management for pension funds
Fiduciary management provides a complete governance framework for pension funds, helping to untangle complexity and prepare them to face the future. From designing bespoke, outcomes-based investment strategies to nimbly shifting portfolios to seize opportunities, our pension fund clients benefit from Mercer’s heritage, skill and scale in the market. We draw on more than seven decades of providing bespoke financial advice to organisations of all types and sizes, with a global strategy team that continually bolsters it’s in depth knowledge across all asset classes and investment themes.
We have the world’s largest proprietary institutional investment manager database of more than 6,717 investment managers and more than GBP 5,6tn of subscriber assets2. This leading position we hold in the market also empowers us to push down on manager fees, which we pass straight to our clients, and engage with them on strategy and performance questions. Running our portfolio management systems in-house, using our own operational platform, also enables us to flex towards protection or opportunities efficiently, depending on our outlook for markets, while keeping our clients’ fees down.
We design complete solutions to give pension funds the tools and the confidence to tackle what lies ahead and to help meet their objectives.
Investment solutions for endowments and foundations
From large, global foundations to small, family-run endowments, we help not-for-profit organisations design portfolios suitable to their needs and that help them in their search of better investment outcomes, while keeping them in control and their costs down.
Our investment solutions governance framework gives our not-for-profit and charities clients access to as much of our institutional investment capability as they need to help meet their objectives. These clients work with our experienced teams to formulate a long-term, diversified investment strategy, drawing on our insight gained from operating in this field for several decades. We can also implement their own strategy, using our institutional-standard operational platform to access a wide global range of managers and asset classes – at competitive fees.
Our dedicated sustainable investment team can also help our clients shape an ESG policy, according to their principles and beliefs, exploring risks and opportunities that could significantly impact their portfolio. We conduct rigorous oversight of portfolios to ensures managers are sticking to their claims on ESG to protect our clients from reputational damage connected to a sector or company.
We want our endowment and foundations clients to stay in control of their portfolio, no matter what the future brings, and feel confident they have a plan in place designed to weather what lies ahead. Connect with us to explore what we can do for you today.
Fiduciary management for Endowments and Foundations
From large, global foundations to small, family-run endowments, we help not-for-profit organisations design portfolios suitable to their needs and in search of better investment outcomes, while keeping them in control and their costs down.
Our fiduciary management governance framework gives our not-for-profit and charity clients access to as much of our institutional investment capability as they need to help meet their objectives. These clients work with our experienced teams to formulate a long-term, diversified investment strategy, drawing on our insight gained from operating in this field for several decades. We can also implement their own strategy, using our institutional-standard operational platform to access a wide global range of managers and asset classes – at competitive fees.
Our dedicated sustainable investment team can also help our clients shape an ESG policy, according to their principles and beliefs, exploring risks and opportunities that could significantly impact their portfolio. We conduct rigorous oversight of portfolios to ensures managers are sticking to their claims on ESG to protect our clients from reputational damage connected to a sector or company.
We want our endowment and foundations clients to stay in control of their portfolio, no matter what the future brings, and feel confident they have a plan in place designed to weather what lies ahead. Connect with us to explore what we can do for you today.
Fiduciary management for wealth managers and family offices
We help wealth managers, including banks, financial advisers and family offices, to clearly define expected investment outcomes and potentially improve the value they deliver to their clients. Through our fiduciary management platform we offer wealth managers a range of core building blocks, covering every step of their clients’ journey From institutional level strategy design to portfolio monitoring and communication, we partner with them to create a tailored framework that focuses on their long-term goals and shorter-term pressures.
Our research capability covers a wide global range of managers, spanning a significant number of asset class - including private market and illiquid portfolios – and is relied on by thousands of investors around the world. As an unbiased provider we select managers solely on quality, and consistently monitor them for shifts in strategy and operational anomalies. We also use our position to push down manager and other third-party fees with the aim of ensuring our clients get the best deal.
We can also support wealth managers on timely implementation and oversight tasks. We can get you to market with new ideas quickly and execute investors’ wishes fast, meaning fewer opportunities are missed. Our fiduciary management platform brings the power, reach and efficiency of Mercer’s global footprint to wealth managers of any size and sophistication around the world, enabling them to sharpen their focus and potentially deliver better client outcomes.
Contact us us to explore what we can do for you today.
Fiduciary management for insurers
From large, global multi-line insurers to small regional specialists, we help many organisations enhance the oversight of their portfolios, while potentially reducing implementation costs and carefully managing risks. Our fiduciary management framework is fundamentally a governance structure that has been designed to give our clients access to as much of our institutional investment capability as they need. It functions as a range of core building blocks that insurers choose and combine to create a precise, tailored package to suit their objectives and budget.
From institutional standard actuarial advice and investment strategy design, through to portfolio implementation and regulatory reporting, we can help on every part of your processes. Thanks to our insurance heritage and significant research capability, we also understand and keep pace with the sector’s regulatory nuances and cashflow requirements. We can therefore construct and implement portfolios, based on diversification and risk management.
We take on dynamic asset allocation duties, enabling our clients’ portfolios to automatically seek protection or opportunities – within pre-agreed guidelines – in times of market volatility. Our operational platform not only ensures our clients comply with regulatory disclosure obligations on carbon, but our strategists can help them avoid underlying investment exposure where they already have notable liabilities.
Whether you need a complete end-to-end solution, informed regulatory reporting or just a trusted second opinion, we have what you need.
Contact us to explore what we can do for you today.
Dan leads on commercial relationships and the implementation of Mercer’s fiduciary management distribution strategy in the UK, while also developing bespoke solutions for a wide range of clients. With more than 25 years’ experience across investment consulting, institutional asset management and business development, Dan is a key figure on both Mercer’s UK Growth Leadership and Investment Solutions European Leadership Committees. Dan started his Mercer career in New York in 1997 before transferring to London in 2000, where he worked until the end of 2014. During this time, he led the launch and development of Mercer’s UK fiduciary management business from inception to overseeing more than GBP 16,8bn in client assets. Dan then moved to Winton Capital Management and Putnam Investments before re-joining Mercer in February 2020.
Helen is a Partner and senior member of Mercer’s Fiduciary Management (FM) team. She is Head of UK Clients and is responsible for all of Mercer’s UK FM clients. This involves over 200 clients and leading a team of ten senior consultants who lead these clients. Alongside her leadership responsibilities Helen has a select portfolio of her own client relationships both within the UK and Europe. These are Mercer’s larger clients. Helen also contributes to Mercer’s European Asset Allocation Committee, In recent years she has been involved in Mercer's responses to the CMA's review of the UK fiduciary and investment consulting industries as well as ensuring the UK Delegated Solutions business was ready for the launch of MiFID II in January 2018. Helen has been with Mercer for over fifteen years. Helen graduated from the University of Nottingham with an honours degree in Management Studies and is a CFA charterholder.
Niall is responsible for the design, implementation and ongoing supervision of Mercer Investment Management's range of fund solutions, which are available to a wide variety of clients across Europe. He is also responsible for our Discretionary Management services. Niall joined Mercer in 2010 from QED in Dublin, where he had been focusing on solution-driven investment opportunities with banks and insurance companies. Prior to this, at Bank of Ireland Global Markets, he created derivative-based solutions along with developing the bank’s LDI product range and inflation-linked solutions. Niall earned a Gold Medal & First Class Honours in Mathematics from Trinity College Dublin, where he was also a Scholar of the College, along with an Honours MSc from Dublin City University in Investments and Treasury Management in which he finished in first place.
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Footnotes
1 Highly rated by Mercer’s in-house global strategic research team.
2 As at 31 December 2019
* Past performance is not an indication of future returns. Superior returns cannot be guaranteed
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