Mercer has announced that it is appointing Aegon to join Friends Life and Zurich on its ‘preferred supplier’ panel for Mercer Workplace Savings (MWS). MWS was launched by Mercer in the UK in 2011 and has £3.6bn of assets committed from 90 corporate and trustee clients.
According to Fiona Dunsire, UK CEO at Mercer, “We chose Aegon on the basis of the range and quality of their products, their commitment to the UK pensions market, their financial strength, and their ongoing investment in technology to help DC members navigate their journey to and through retirement. MWS is already a great success and has filled a gap in the pensions market by combining Mercer’s investment and operational governance expertise with the strong administration and communication services from our preferred suppliers. The partnership with Aegon will support the future development of MWS in the light of major changes to the pensions market. We are very pleased to have them working with us to help improve the retirement prospects of the UK’s employees.”
According to Angela-Seymour Jackson, Managing Director of Workplace Solutions at Aegon UK, "We're delighted to be joining Mercer Workplace Savings as a preferred partner. It was an extremely rigorous assessment process so it's fantastic to see our Workplace proposition, including Aegon Retirement Choices (ARC), make the extremely high standard they demand for their customers.
"Mercer is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious consultancies and our strategies are very similar as we’re both focused on delivering a great service to employers and better retirements for employees. MWS has already been highly successful and we look forward to playing a significant role in this partnership going forwards"
With Auto Enrolment in full swing and defined contribution (DC) becoming the dominant retirement savings vehicle there is an increasing focus on enabling better outcomes for employees, says Mercer. MWS helps companies address this challenge by providing the flexibility, information, modeling and investment solutions to meet the saving needs of employees throughout their working lives and into retirement.
Mercer’s MWS service allows companies to select the investment and savings products and services they provide to their employees. The range covers trust and contract-based pension schemes, ISAs and direct investments into collective investment vehicles so that companies can choose to expand their offering beyond pensions to wider savings provision either now or at a later date. Mercer selects providers, ‘the preferred supplier panel’, who continually commit to provide market-leading products and investment in their technology platforms. Mercer has been able to negotiate commitments from each of the MWS providers in terms of service level performance and our clients benefit from these service levels through their own contracts with the providers. By using MWS, companies and employees gain access to Mercer's intellectual capital and investment solutions using funds researched and monitored through Mercer’s award winning investment capabilities.
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