| Rate the Raters 2012 |
|---|
Leveraging worldwide resources, Mercer’s global status has helped win respect for its research methods among the majority of fund managers in Money Management’s Rate the Raters survey in 2012.
It’s what sets the ratings house apart, according to Mercer’s media and communications manager for Australia and New Zealand, Caroline James, who said it is the only Australian-based ratings house to service institutional clients globally.
Mercer has 120 manager research staff globally, each with an average financial services industry experience of 15 years, she said. Fourteen per cent of respondents rated Mercer’s research methodologies as ‘excellent’ and a further 57 per cent ‘good’.
“We believe we are in a unique position to be able to bring the best global ideas of the institutional market to Australian financial planners,” James said.
She said Mercer believes research and knowledge-sharing is integral to providing value-added advice. Mercer’s local team draw on the knowledge and research of global colleagues via a range of tools and interactions that are continually invested in, James said.
“This ensures we continue to develop our investment thinking ahead of the market,” she said.
Fundies rated ‘transparency’ as a weak point for Mercer, with 50 per cent of respondents ticking Mercer off as ‘poor’. James said this may be explained by its relative position amongst the competition.
“Unlike our competitors, Mercer does not accept payment for ratings nor does it seek to be a library and publish research directly to our market,” she said.
Mercer distributes research to clients and maintains quarterly contact with managers it reviewed as highly rated but does not provide intellectual property to all fund managers, James said.
She said inconsistent results for ‘feedback’ may stem from Mercer’s product selection process.
James said Mercer were heeding industry’s call to provide more than just investment research and were currently expanding wealth management services to include governance advice, client risk profiling tools, product development and innovations in post-retirement product design.
