Mercer bolsters Wealth Management offer with new services

• High Volume Research and Monitoring provide bespoke fund screening for wealth managers
• Mercer Advisor Portal (MAP) launch due in Q3 2013

Mercer has announced that it has developed a High Volume Research (HVR) and High Volume Monitoring (HVM) service as part of its roll-out of investment services to the wealth management industry. Mercer’s HVR and HVM give financial advisors and wealth management oversight on potential issues in funds in which their clients are invested.

Mercer’s HVR service provides a bespoke high-level review of funds rather than the traditional full manager research reports. HVR aims to help wealth managers identify possible issues with the funds in which they might invest client money. By comparison, HVM is a regular monitoring service, where Mercer’s team will seek to identify material changes with a fund which could impact client outcomes.

“We have seen growing client demand in our Wealth Management services, so we are investing time and resources in this area and 2013 will see us rolling out new services. HVM and HVR are more accessible versions of our traditional consulting model and they are already being used by a number of existing clients. Mercer’s heritage and expertise put us in an exceptionally strong position to help clients with investment activities they undertake for their clients,” says Cara Williams, Senior Partner and Global Head of Mercer’s Wealth Management service.

HVM and HVR are powerful tools allowing wealth managers to access the material, strategies and intellectual capital used by institutional investors and pension funds. With HVR, Mercer uses the same intellectual capital that underpins Mercer’s four factor research framework of idea generation, portfolio construction, implementation and business management. HVR is delivered to clients as a concise report.

According to Bev Sharp, Global Head of Retail Research, “This approach can provide a base-level view of a fund and can help to prioritize funds for deeper due diligence, if required. High-volume monitoring (HVM) follows the same approach to identify material changes in an investment team, strategy, or the firm and can be conducted on a regular basis for clients. HVR and HVM services are cost effective and time efficient for clients although it is not a short-cut to manager research and will not result in a rating.”

The new services come in advance of the roll out of the Mercer Advisor Portal (MAP) in September 2013.  Wealth managers, private client asset managers, private banks and financial advisors will be able to access, through the portal, forward-looking, institutional-quality research and analytical tools to help improve the performance of their clients’ assets.  The system was developed as an alternative to strictly quantitative approaches to asset allocation and manager selection.