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, 2022, Mercer’s discretionary assets under management were approximately $117
billion, and non-discretionary assets under management were approximately $5.4 billion.
Mercer’s Investment Management Services
Mercer provides investment management services primarily utilizing a multi-manager approach to
investing. Mercer’s multi-manager approach is often implemented through the use of proprietary multi-
manager investment vehicles, 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”). 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. For more information on the Affiliated Funds please refer to their
respective offering documents or contact your Mercer representative for additional information.
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, and simplification of investment lineup. Additionally, Mercer’s ability to manage
operational risk may be more readily facilitated through investments in Affiliated Funds, including as it
relates to liability-driven fixed income investment, rebalancing, and liquidity management for purposes of,
among other things, deploying contributions and making benefit payments.
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 forecast, based upon Mercer’s capital markets assumptions,
concerning the expected returns and risks of a variety of asset classes;
5. Advising and analysis on environmental, social and governance considerations of an investment
strategy, manager or portfolio; and
6. Recommending the client select certain investment strategies, retain or terminate certain
investment managers, or reallocate 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, sustainable
investing, and transaction cost analysis; 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 not only advising on the selection and performance
assessment of custodians and transition managers, but also 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 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. 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. Separately,
certain modules within MercerInsight can also be licensed on a subscription basis to investment
managers.
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 and 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 (grey investments), through to investments that are low
carbon risk / zero carbon already, or those that are providing climate solutions (green investments).
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. Services that can be delegated or provided in conjunction with affiliates,
including the “Participating Affiliates” (described in Item 10), 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, partnering and 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 proposal 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.