Keeping portfolios on top. Fiduciary management that thinks ahead.

In today’s evolving market environment, the demand for specialisation is greater than ever. Mercer’s acquisitions of Cardano and SECOR Asset Management directly responds to this market shift. As your outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO), we partner with you to build agile, more resilient and innovative investment portfolios designed to deliver your individual governance and investment needs.
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What is fiduciary management?

Time, expertise and confidence

Lean on our consultants to provide the advice, insight, implementation and operations your portfolio needs to help you invest with confidence. Explore what our range of investment solutions could mean for your portfolio today.
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Put simply, fiduciary management is the combination of investment advice with implementation. Institutional Investors are freed up to focus on strategic decision making and long-term outcomes.

Investment challenges such as; increasing complexity, ESG, sustainability and managing ongoing costs have increased the demand for management solutions.

Mercer was one of the UK’s earliest providers of fiduciary management services. We provide single asset class or portfolio solutions. Increasingly larger asset owners are redefining their requirements in terms of OCIO (Outsourced Chief investment Officer).

Broadly speaking, fiduciary services can deliver five key advantages:

  • Flexible and robust governance

    We believe the best approach is to tailor fiduciary management solutions to a client’s specific needs and circumstances. Clients can phase in new ideas at their own pace.

  • De-risking

    Our flagship DB pensions solution includes automatic de-risking triggers to lock in funding level gains. A well-implemented de-risking programme gives you increasing certainty that your funding position will be ‘locked in’ over time and there will be no nasty surprises.

  • Access highly rated investment managers

    With more than 200 investment researchers, we offer access to some of the best thinking in the market and quality managers who can help generate outperformance. In particular, we have significant resources focused on providing access to diversified collections of specialist private markets managers: designed to improve portfolio efficiency, these portfolios have produced strong returns.

  • Cost savings

    We leverage our global scale to achieve some of the most competitive fees in the market. Our global implementation framework ensures that each client receives the same access to highly-rated investment managers at the same, low underlying management costs. Any fee discounts we negotiate pass through to our clients.

  • ESG integration

    Our investment portfolios reflect ESG themes and keep our clients ahead of their regulatory obligations. Many institutional investors want to integrate ESG into their decision making but struggle to do so given various constraints. Our fiduciary management solution has these themes built-in.

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We partner with our clients to build agile, more resilient and innovative investment portfolios, designed to deliver their individual governance and needs. We do this by combining our enhanced expertise in investing directly in global securities with our continued access to our highly rated strategies from across the asset management industry1.

The result is the ability to fully customise portfolios for clients – based on their specific goals and underpinned by our investment advisory heritage, our deep knowledge of the global investment universe, and our capabilities across research, advice, and solutions. 

Working as an extension of your team, we flex our services to suit your requirements, providing support across a suite of services—from governance and due diligence to manager research and risk mitigation—along with implementation services that encompass allocation strategies to specialist areas such as alternatives, as well as direct investing capabilities.

Footnote

1. Pursuant to Mercer’s proprietary rating process the rating assigned to a strategy may or may not be consistent with its past performance. Although the rating reflects our expectations on future performance over a time frame appropriate for the particular strategy, we do not guarantee that these expectations will be fulfilled. Please see the Guide to Mercer’s Investment Strategy Ratings.

  • Investment consulting

    For more than 40 years, Mercer Investment Consulting has been a leader in the UK market. Through intensive global research, intellectual capital and specialist solutions, we create value for pension funds, endowments, foundations and other investors.

  • 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.

  • Liability-driven investing (LDI)

    LDI has increasingly become a central pillar of a pension scheme funding strategy. We are solutions-orientated and offer two approaches which reflect investor’s individual circumstances, objectives and ultimately what represents best value to the end investor.

Is your portfolio prepared for today’s exceptional challenges?

Institutional investors have rarely faced greater challenges. Rising interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty and inflation are creating headwinds for financial markets, while regulatory requirements are becoming more complex.

At such a testing time, institutional investors need to address challenges in the following areas:

  • Achieving real investment returns in an uncertain environment.
  • Ensuring the suitability of your investment strategy and investment managers.
  • Increasing complexity and the risk of regulatory requirements.
  • Managing liquidity.
  • Operational inefficiencies and implementation timelines.
  • Manager fees, transparency and other costs.

For many institutional investors, portfolios structures that have worked well for the last few decades are under pressure. This is a crucial moment to stress test investment beliefs and strategies.

We work in partnership with clients, delivering access to the best thinking in the market. We help you to analyse the challenges you face, giving you the knowledge and confidence to make effective decisions. As you choose to phase in new ideas and asset classes, we have the flexibility to do so at whatever pace suits you.
Dan Melley

Partner at Mercer, Commercial Head of Investments

Alison Bostock shares her experience

Even in the best of times, defined benefit (DB) pension schemes have to be able to respond quickly to lock in funding gains. Hear Alison’s story about the benefit of investment solutions – Alison Bostock, Trustee Director at PTL

Addressing complex investment challenges

Our achievements

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

Our latest insights about fiduciary management

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