Hewitt ups ante on delegated consultancy tool

The employee benefits giant manages around £1bn for eight schemes with sponsors varying from small private businesses to FTSE 100 companies.

It rolled out the fiduciary management proposition, which sees it assume complete investment control of some or all of a scheme’s portfolio, to its first client at the end of last year.

And Hewitt delegated consulting chief Zuhair Mohammed (pictured) said the business is close to securing another 12 contracts, bringing its total assets managed to £2.5bn.

Clients give the consultant funding level targets over a period of time, and it decides on an asset allocation to achieve this, before investing from among funds its investment practice has rated as ‘buy’.

“We are talking to quite an interesting mix of clients, from small schemes who want a specialist risk manager, to larger ones who give us a portion of their portfolios,” said Mohammed.

“We went to the market with this last year, with a view to building up a client base, and the first came on in December.

“We hope to have the rest on in a matter of months. We’re in the final stages of sorting out the contracts,which is quite a lengthy process.”

Frank Russell’s fiduciary management tie-up with Aon is speculated to be one of the first cuts to be made as part of the firm’s merger with Hewitt.

While neither Hewitt or Aon are openly talking about what cutbacks are being proposed, ex-Hewitt employees with knowledge of its investment arm believes its fund management resources will make it self-sufficient.