Mercer to offer pension management

Mercer Human Resource Consulting has launched a new scheme aimed at helping companies manage their pension plans.

Mercer Retirement Solutions will offer companies the chance to hand over the running of their individual pension programmes to Mercer with the aim of reducing the cost to the company and providing a wider range of investment opportunities for employees' funds.

"Companies are coming under increasing pressure in relation to pensions and have been looking for new ways to manage pension plans for a while," said John Feely, business leader for Mercer Retirement Solutions. "What we are offering is a more efficient and cost certain way of doing just that."

Increased regulation and compliance surrounding pensions is making the issue more of a burden for company executives, according to Mercer.

A recent survey carried out by the group showed that more than half of the respondents, the majority of whom were pension fund trustees, are not comfortable with their roles. In addition it also found that the stricter regulatory environment had significantly increased costs for businesses.

"The bottom line is that companies want a simpler and more cost efficient approach to providing retirement benefits for their employees," said Mr Feely.

The programme, which was also launched in the UK yesterday, already has 12 participants in Ireland. Mr Feely said he expects the take-up to be particularly high among small and medium-sized companies which currently only have limited access to funds for their pension schemes. Under the terms of the programme, a specially created investment platform will give participants access to a wide range of funds under the guidance of trained investment managers.

According to Mr Feely, the programme will also be very useful for companies who are in the process of closing down their defined benefit scheme and opening a defined contribution scheme, a shift that can often take up a lot of management time and be costly.

The programme will also offer pension advice to individual employees.