Mercer provides investment management services and oversees the asset allocation, investment
decisions, rebalancing and investment monitoring of client portfolios. Mercer also provides investment
consulting services and offers guidance at each stage of investment decision-making, risk management,
and investment monitoring processes. Our clients include sponsors and fiduciaries of employee benefit
plans, foundations, endowments, healthcare organizations, insurance companies, financial intermediaries,
and other investors. Mercer has been registered with the SEC as an investment adviser since 2005.
Mercer is wholly owned by Mercer (US) LLC, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan
Companies, Inc. (“Marsh McLennan”). Marsh McLennan is a public corporation listed on the New York,
NYSE Chicago, and London stock exchanges (ticker symbol: MMC). Marsh McLennan’s website address
is
www.mmc.com.
As of December 31, 2023, Mercer’s discretionary assets under management were approximately $123
billion, and non-discretionary assets under management were approximately six billion.1
Mercer’s Investment Management Services
Mercer provides investment management services primarily utilizing a multi-manager approach to
investing. Mercer manages a series of pre-defined and/or custom investment strategies that differ by risk
and potential return characteristics. Mercer’s investment strategies employ unaffiliated third-party
investment managers (“subadvisers”), typically multiple subadvisers in a single strategy, to seek desired
diversification and risk characteristics. Mercer implements its multi-manager approach through the use of
multi-manager investment vehicles that it sponsors, including registered investment companies, common,
collective, and group trust funds, and private investment funds, including private markets and hedge
fund-of-funds (collectively, “Affiliated Funds”) and/or through a combination of subadvisers’ proprietary
investment vehicles and subadviser-managed separate accounts. For additional information on the
Affiliated Funds, please refer to their respective offering documents or contact your Mercer representative.
The decision to invest client assets in pooled investment vehicles (including Affiliated Funds) or separate
accounts is based on a number of factors, including the client’s investment strategy, objectives, restrictions,
size, subadviser minimum asset size requirements for separate accounts, and available assets and cash.
Mercer’s decision to cause or recommend investments in Affiliated Funds for a particular client takes into
account a variety of factors, including, for example, that the client may achieve greater diversification at a
given level of fees, simplification of investment lineup, and operational efficiencies relating to liability-driven
fixed income investment, rebalancing, and liquidity management for purposes of, among other things,
deploying contributions and making benefit payments.
1 Effective March 15, 2024, Mercer completed the acquisition of Vanguard’s institutional advisory business
resulting in the assumption by Mercer of 1058 clients’ contracts representing, as of December 31, 2023, an
additional $51 billon in discretionary assets under management and five billion in non-discretionary assets
under management. These additional assets have not been reflected in the December 31, 2023, Mercer
assets under management dollar amounts noted above or in the applicable items of Mercer’s Form ADV
Part 1A.
Mercer also assists certain clients with developing overall investment objectives and restrictions, asset
allocation strategies, portfolio structure analysis, and/or asset rebalancing; however, the final decision
regarding these matters generally remains with the client.
Mercer’s Investment Consulting Services
Mercer provides ongoing as well as project-based advice on investment policy and asset allocation based
upon a client’s specific investment objectives for risk and return. Clients typically retain final
decision-making authority for the overall content of their investment policy statement, including asset
allocation targets, overall investment objectives, and selection of investment strategies. Mercer’s consulting
services include:
1. Assisting clients with developing and documenting investment objectives, risk tolerance and cash
flow needs relative to market opportunities;
2. Establishing and advising on asset allocation and portfolio structures;
3. Consulting on the effect of asset mix on projected asset values and cash flows;
4. Providing Mercer’s economic forecasts that are based upon Mercer’s capital markets assumptions
and address expected returns and risks for a variety of asset classes;
5. Providing advice and analysis on environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) considerations of
a particular investment strategy, manager or portfolio; and
6. Making client recommendations concerning certain investment strategies, retention or termination
of certain investment managers, and/or reallocation of assets among various managers or
strategies.
Mercer prepares and presents regular performance measurement reports for clients. These typically
include:
1. Commentary and recommendations regarding manager performance and asset allocation;
2. Observations on current investment market and trends;
3. Special reports and analyses on topical issues such as alternative investments and sustainable
investing; and
4. Performance attribution, which analyzes portfolio and/or fund performance, broken down into its
various sub-component sources of risk and return.
In preparing such reports, Mercer is able to leverage the research, administrative and support functions of
its global affiliates.
Mercer also consults with clients regarding the appropriate benchmarks against which to measure
investment performance, which may involve comparisons against market indices, benchmark portfolios,
and/or
Mercer-developed peer groups based on analysis by Mercer’s manager research group (“Manager
Research”).
Mercer’s Executive Benefits Group (“EBG”) provides non-discretionary investment advice on the design
and funding of executive nonqualified benefit plans. This includes:
1. Evaluating existing funding strategies and products;
2. Analysis and modeling of financing alternatives; and
3. Evaluating providers of life insurance products.
Other Services
• Mercer Sentinel, a specialty research and consulting division of Mercer, provides consulting advice
regarding investment operations. This includes advising on the selection and performance assessment
of custodians and transition managers and assessing the operational efficiency and risk of investment
managers, securities lending programs, service providers, and foreign exchange execution. Mercer
Sentinel also offers trading cost analysis, which provides an analysis of the execution cost of each
broker in an investment portfolio.
Mercer, in conjunction with its global affiliates, sponsors Global Investment Forum (“Forum”)
conferences. The goal of the Forum is to provide clients with intellectual capital from Mercer’s
investment consulting and research areas as well as other areas of Mercer’s business. The Forum
provides Mercer a platform to examine topics of importance, develop and/or disseminate Mercer’s
intellectual capital and research, and disseminate survey-based investment research and other related
information to plan sponsors, other institutional investors, investment managers, and Mercer
investment consultants around the world. Mercer also shares intellectual capital through its online
forum known as MercerInsight® Community.
• MercerInsight® is an institutional data, analytics, and research platform licensed on a subscription
basis to plan sponsors, other institutional investors, and investment advisers. MercerInsight provides
subscribers with the capability to filter and retrieve investment manager information and performance,
Mercer’s ratings and research material for these investment managers’ products, and other related
information. Subscribers may also access Mercer’s ratings and research material for these investment
managers’ products through distribution on third-party platforms. Certain modules within MercerInsight
can also be licensed on a subscription basis to investment managers. Separately, investment
managers provide information relating to their investment advisory business and investment products
at no charge, either directly to Mercer via its Global Investment Manager Database™ (“GIMD”), or the
Mercer Sentinel Database, or to a third-party data provider which then licenses such information to
Mercer.
• Mercer's Analytics for Climate Transition (“ACT”) is a tool designed to help clients who want to
establish a climate transition plan and set climate-related portfolio targets. It takes a forward-looking,
total portfolio approach, evaluating transition capacity and measuring current emissions, as well as a
bottom-up approach. This bottom-up, asset level assessment can cover publicly traded securities
issued by corporate and government issuers, as well as private market investments. Publicly traded
securities, including equities, corporate debt, emerging market debt, and certain agency
mortgage-backed securities are assigned an ACT score and an ACT category using third-party
issuer-level metrics data provided by MSCI and ISS as well as Mercer’s own factor weighting
approach. Private market assets, including private equity, private credit, real assets and infrastructure
are assigned carbon intensity and an ACT Score by Mercer by averaging GICS sub-industries in an
appropriate broad market index, such as the MSCI World Index, as a proxy for private markets
securities. ACT helps interested clients assess their portfolio using metrics from third-party providers
in an effort to estimate carbon risk across the portfolio, from low transition capacity investments,
through to investments that are low carbon risk / zero carbon, or those that are providing climate
solutions.
In certain cases, Mercer’s services are delegated to, or provided in connection with, one or more of its
affiliates as described in Item 10 below. Services that can be delegated or provided in conjunction with
affiliates, including the “Participating Affiliates” (also as described in Item 10 below), include investment
manager research, operational due diligence, performance reporting, retirement plan consulting, financial
wellness consulting, and client servicing. Mercer also offers certain specialized consulting services to its
clients, in conjunction with its affiliates. These services include, but are not limited to, planned pension de-
risking solutions, research on custodians and transition brokers, strategic investment advice, enterprise risk
management solutions, collaborating with clients to develop the client’s research material, and other
services. Additional consulting services provided to plan sponsors of defined contribution retirement plans
and other employee benefit plans (such as non-qualified deferred compensation plans) include, for
example, advising on plan governance, fiduciary obligations, plan participant education efforts, assisting
with requests for proposals for plan service providers, conducting plan service provider benchmarking
projects, and assisting with implementation of plan changes.
Additionally, some investment consulting clients engage Mercer to perform certain non-fiduciary
administrative and operational services at the client’s direction. The services generally include items such
as assistance with opening or utilizing client custodial or brokerage accounts and communication of trading
instructions, as well as general operational/administration assistance. Fees for these services are
negotiable, are not subject to a standard fee schedule, and may be either separate from, or included in, the
consulting fee paid by the client.