She will be responsible for the firm’s wealth portfolio in Australia and New Zealand, which comprises its superannuation services arm, multimanager and investment solutions business, and Mercer Super Trust which holds some $63 billion in assets under management.
David Bryant, CEO of Marsh McLennan Pacific and president of Mercer Pacific, said: “Helping our clients reshape investment and retirement outcomes is the core of what we do at Mercer, and we have made significant inroads in expanding our capability in this space over the past two years.
“Cathy has the vision and experience needed to advise our clients in an ever-changing market and drive Mercer’s strong investments and retirement growth agenda in the Pacific region.”
Hales is an experienced business leader and non-executive director with experience working across early stage and established multinational businesses in Australia, the US and Europe.
She brings three decades of experience in financial services to the role. A former global head at Fidante Partners, she helped grow the business from around $15 billion to $60 billion in her seven-year tenure.
Prior to that, she spent nearly eight years as managing director and global COO of client relations and marketing at RREEF (New York), Deutsche Bank’s global alternative asset management operation. In this role, she led product development, marketing and sales management following two years of leading product strategy for Deutsche Asset Management’s Australian operations.
She has also held various roles at Macquarie Group, Colonial First State and BT Financial Group.
Earlier this month, Mercer Australia welcomed two non-executive directors, Sangeeta Venkatesan and David Hartley, to the Mercer Investments and Advance Asset Management boards.
In April, John Allmey, BT’s former head of investment specialists, was named strategic relationships leader – wealth management at Mercer Australia.
The news followed the sale of BT Investment Solutions (BTIS)/Advance Asset Management business to Mercer, an alongside transaction with the BT Super business’s Successor Funds Transfer into the Mercer Super Trust.
