What is investment consulting?

Our investment consultancy services give clients specific guidance at every stage of investment decision-making, risk management and monitoring. In fact, we have been helping pension funds, endowments, foundations and other investors for more than 40 years.

We create value by equipping our investment consultants with extensive global research and intellectual capital. They then have the freedom to design investment solutions for specific client situations. You can tailor our services to your needs, opting for anything from research and advice, through to specialist solutions including fiduciary management.

Broadly, our services fall into three categories:

  1. Research
    We help our clients to be informed about market changes and trends that may impact them.
  2. Advice
    We advise clients on the best strategies for converting insights into actions designed to achieve your target outcomes.
  3. Solutions
    We have a range of specialist services for implementing your investment strategies, including fiduciary management.

Globally, Mercer provides investment advice to over 3,900 clients, with more than $17 trillion in assets. In the UK specifically, we have more than 400 clients, with combined assets totalling over £648 billion. Additionally, we have clients where we act as a fiduciary manager.

At the heart of our investment consulting is our global research. A significant number of staff globally carry out investment manager research. What’s more, our strategic research group of about 40 senior people globally develops forward-looking, dynamic ideas to improve the positioning of client portfolios.

Read more about our investment services

We have built a number of specialist teams which means our investment consultants can offer you a range of specialist resources.
  • Fiduciary Management / OCIO

    For 15 years, Mercer has provided fiduciary management services to a range of institutional investors – from pension schemes to endowments, foundations, insurers and wealth managers. Our flexibility, global intellectual capital and manager research help us to deliver for clients.
  • Sustainable investment

    Drawing on two decades of experience, we offer research, advice, tools and solutions to help you wherever you are on your sustainable investing journey.
  • Endowments, foundations & charity investment solutions

    We have been working with endowments, foundations and charities for more than 50 years. Our independent investment research, advice, and solutions are customised to your organisation and positioned to help you seek better investment outcomes, whilst also pursuing your mission.
  • Insurance companies

    We have been working with insurance companies of all sizes for more than 30 years and understand the unique complexities and requirements of the industry. We offer advice and resources to help you transform your investment program into a strategic differentiator.
  • Wealth managers & financial intermediaries

    We help wealth managers and financial intermediaries build custom portfolios and pursue investment opportunities for clients across geographies, asset classes, and public and private markets.
  • Alternatives & private markets

    We can help you generate new ideas and uncover innovation across all alternative investment asset classes, and source quality managers and strategies to suit your specific needs.

Is your portfolio prepared for today’s developing challenges?

Institutional investors have rarely faced such challenges. Today’s testing market environment is creating headwinds for achieving your investment goals. Meanwhile, sustainable investing is evolving and regulations are changing. There’s a greater need than ever for specialist expertise and monitoring.

Portfolio structures that have worked well for the past two decades are being tested. Institutions need to stress-test their strategies, addressing challenges in the following areas.

  • Understanding market trends and how they might affect your ability to achieve your investment objectives. Additionally, finding medium-term market opportunities or ways to reduce risk.
  • Monitoring funding levels and asset-liability management projections. Making any changes needed to achieve them.
  • For defined benefit pension schemes, finding the best way to manage, reduce or remove risk as they move along the path to the end of their journeys.
  • Selecting highly rated asset managers. Having sufficient research to generate manager outperformance from selecting quality active managers.
  • Developing and implementing sustainable investment policies. Framing policies that will adapt to changes in sustainable investment as it evolves. Researching quality investment managers.
  • Finding ways to improve governance and reduce costs in operations. Taking an analytical approach can realise significant efficiencies in areas such as custody and securities lending, asset transitions and operations generally.

Beyond addressing these challenges, it’s important to monitor changes in your portfolios, as well as in regulation. Do you have highly rated portfolio analytics? Are you following the latest governance and regulatory updates?

We create value by listening to our clients issues and needs, equipping our investment consultants with extensive global research and intellectual capital and then allowing them the freedom to design the solution for the specific client situation.
Dan Melley

UK Head of Investments

There are three stages for optimising your portfolio.

Seeing through the confusing macro economic signals is hard in today’s markets, as is selecting the best investment managers. If you believe you need guidance to find actionable ideas and highly rated managers, our investment consultants can provide the support you need now and in the future.

Thinking critically about your journey plan and your timeframe for achieving it is the first step towards resolving any problems. We work closely with our clients to identify any immediate changes you can make, as well as a roadmap for addressing risk.

Our specialist teams support you in implementing strategies that meet your goals. At all times we focus on execution, seeking to minimise risks and costs.

Our achievements

We're delighted to have won four awards at the 2022 Professional Pensions Awards

Our latest insights on investments


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