Navigate uncertain markets with investment manager research

In today’s environment, investors are demanding information and guidance on a wider array of products. To potentially help you meet the need and prove your value to fee-sensitive investors, Mercer provides unbiased, independent investment manager research.
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Identifying Alpha with investment manager research

We go beyond performance numbers to provide forward-looking insights that span the diversity of the global economy and allow you to introduce new investment ideas to your clients.

Active management seeks to generate repeatable excess return. However, it is rare. At Mercer, we believe that using an investment manager research process may enhance the probability of identifying alpha. Our process is:

  • Research-driven

    Fundamental, forward-looking, and research-intensive, every step builds on a deep understanding of the investment strategies covered.

  • Evidence-based

    Focused on asset class and the characteristics of investment strategies that have been shown to enhance the probability of sustainable alpha generation, which can vary over time.

  • Repeatable

    A robust and consistent framework that assesses [alt. helps evaluate] each investment strategy’s capabilities in four areas: idea generation, portfolio construction, implementation, and business management.¹

  • Flexible

    Knowing that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, we rely on our experience to help target relevant characteristics for [alt. of] a given investment manager research strategy.

Discovering the most compelling managers

Through our in-depth, sophisticated global investment manager research, we may help you differentiate your business, gain access to a diverse range of portfolios, and identify what we believe are the best ideas. With Mercer as your guide, we believe you have:
  • More time
    We handle the investment manager research so you have more time to focus on client service and development. 
  • More expertise
    As one of the largest investment consultant worldwide, we continually invest in our intellectual capital. That means we devote a great deal of effort to exploring new and smaller managers who are launching new strategies — the fund manager stars of tomorrow. And with our global reach, we’re able to meet them in-person anywhere in the world from New York to Sydney to Hong Kong and Singapore.
  • More in-depth research
    While investment data available to financial intermediaries has been commoditized and does not distinguish one firm from another, Mercer’s deep investment manager research and due diligence process synthesizes not only the data but the insights from interviews to go beyond what’s publicly available. With more than 135 dedicated research professionals worldwide, we’re able to dive deep into the disciplines and seek the competitive edge of investment managers.
The end result? Forward-looking research that provides both qualitative insights and quantitative analysis, continually evolving to identify and assess any changes that could impact a portfolio.
18+

On-average years of experience of our investment researchers

200+

Dedicated researchers worldwide

Our investment manager research process

We follow a highly rigorous and consistent research framework that helps enable objective and consistent comparison. The key factors we assess are:

  • How strong is the manager’s ability to generate value-adding investment ideas?
  • How effectively are these investment ideas translated into weighting in the portfolio?
  • How much of the value-add is given back in the form of transaction costs and opportunity costs?
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Power your investment manager research with MercerInsight®

MercerInsight plays a key role in the investment manager research process. This easy-to-use, cloud-based tool for monitoring and selecting investment managers provides access to insights and analytics on 6,700+ managers and 35,000+ strategies. Designed as the engine for our own internal staff, it’s made available to manager selection teams at pension plans, endowments, insurance companies and financial intermediaries around the world who value its rich content for idea generation and manager monitoring.

For institutional investors — Mercer’s powerful cloud-based platform provides global, extensive coverage of the investment strategies available to institutional investors. View quantitative analysis on performance and holdings data, as well as manager ratings from Mercer’s global manager research boutiques.

For investment managers — From performance analytics to investors search activity, MercerInsight provides investment managers with the intelligence they need to assess their product positioning in the institutional marketplace.

Improve your firm’s visibility in our Global Investment Manager Research Database

Our Global Investment Manager Database (GIMD™) is a proprietary, real-time database with information on more than 6,700 investment managers. GIMD makes your firm visible to Mercer’s global investment manager research team that conducts several thousand meetings with investment managers each year to identify investment strategies suitable for our clients.

Top investment manager research differentiators:

  • Global

    Our structure combines local knowledge and on-the-ground access with global collaboration. 

  • Focused

    Our team of asset class specialists have deep knowledge of specialist areas.

  • Independent

    Team incentivized by identifying highly-rated opportunities.

  • Consistent

    Our rigorious research framework helps enable objective and consistent comparison.

  • Experienced

    We have several decades of experience in investment manager research.

  • Broad access

    Because of Mercer’s scale and reputation, we have significant access to senior investors, CIOs, and CEOs.

Investment manager research insights 

Stay informed with the latest investment manager research. Wealth Manager Solutions thinking and more.

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