Consultancies must be dynamic in their approach to retirement benefits as well as overall total rewards, or risk losing client loyalty through overreaching and/or under-delivering. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Retirement benefits are in a continual state of flux, with new challenges presenting every day in the form of new regulations, market volatility, and employee demand. Consequently, employers continue to search for new and innovative ways to remain on sound financial footing with retirement plans while still delighting existing employees and utilizing rewards as an attraction and retention tool.

Within the consulting landscape, specialization in specific retirement benefit service offerings still exists, but it is an uphill battle in the face of clients increasingly seeking holistic solutions, whether that is a DB and DC capability, DB/DC and financial well-being, or total rewards, which factors in a much wider variety of benefits and services geared toward improving the employee experience and perception of the companies for whom they work.

Advantage in this market goes toward the consultancies that are able to offer a broad level of services, but can also scale it down to the tactical level as needed.

Consultancies must be dynamic in their approach to retirement benefits as well as overall total rewards, or risk losing client loyalty through overreaching and/or under-delivering.

ALM Consulting Intelligence has been researching the management consulting industry for over 40 years, examining the global consulting marketplace across a variety of topic areas. ALMCI uses extensive proprietary research methodologies, primary, and secondary resources to examine consulting firms' client-serving capabilities. Each year, it reviews the retirement benefits consulting market and juxtaposes market trends against consulting capabilities across a large selection of firms from a depth, breadth, and client impact perspective. For 2019, ALMCI's top 5 consulting firms for retirement benefits are as follows:

Aon

Aon's suite of retirement consulting services covers the full spectrum of retirement benefits advisory needs, including plan design, global risk, DB and DC advisory, and legal consulting, among others. The firm approaches retirement consulting with a focus on reducing the retirement readiness gap for employees.

The average employee is typically not adequately preparing for retirement, and Aon works with clients to improve individual employee outcomes while creating an agile retirement benefits plan that is able to effectively navigate regulatory changes and market volatility.

Possessing a comprehensive suite of advisory services for retirement benefits, Aon's breadth of capability stands out in the competitive landscape. Utilizing extensive benchmarking and assessment tools to understand client needs, the firm is strongly positioned to improve benefits outcomes and individual employee retirement readiness.

Strongest attribute(s):

External market insight: Aon effectively utilizes its extensive client base to create a deep catalog of benchmarking data, conveyed to clients through the firm's Benefits Index tool as well as summarized rewards specifications tailored to industry and geography. Coupled with the firm's understanding of regulations across the globe, Aon is afforded strong insights into external market factors.

Deloitte

Service delivery for Deloitte's retirement advisory is provided within the context of retirement providers and employers. For providers, the firm provides operational optimization through smart utilization of technologies and automation. For employers, Deloitte provides end-to-end consultative support, starting with needs assessments derived through client workforce analysis, juxtaposed against market trends and established benchmarks.

The firm's thorough assessment phase leads to the development of tailored strategies for total rewards, pensions risk, sourcing, and tax reform, among others, and drives decision-making for vendor selection and governance.

Deloitte's approach to retirement benefits is largely in the context of holistic rewards management, which includes health benefits, compensation, well-being, and employee experience.

While able to place retirement benefits within the broader context of total rewards transformation, the firm also provides discrete service offerings specifically for DB and DC plans as well as financial wellness.

Strongest attribute(s):

Client operating system development: Deloitte's rewards optimization approach effectively improves operations within client organizations, offering comprehensive benefits offerings at reduced operating costs. The use of digital tools, automation, and process improvements creates greater efficiencies and operational excellence.

Project management: Deloitte's ability to scale up to total rewards or scale down to specific engagements in the benefits space, such as retirement, denotes a strong capability to prioritize based on client needs in addition to agility as those needs evolve through the transformation process. The firm's cross-functional teams are able to quickly adapt to new client objectives, while project leadership remains keenly aware of overarching end goals.

EY

EY posits that traditional approaches to retirement benefits are disjointed and not mature enough to manage increasing complexities of benefits diversity and investment challenges due to market volatility. To that end, the firm's services seek to evolve daily operations as well as high level strategic thinking to align with modern challenges, improving agility for decision-makers to adapt quickly as trends continually evolve.

Enabling this approach is EY's global presence and familiarity with various regulatory environments. Taking a global perspective and applying it to local client challenges, the firm offers best practices gleaned from a variety of sources, supported by benchmarking and tangible results.

Leveraging its breadth of experience in various geographies, EY's retirement benefits consulting comes from a global mindset, gleaning best practices in various regions to create unique and innovative solutions for clients.

The firm stresses the importance of stakeholder buy-in across the pensions and retirement value chain in order to successfully strategize and implement holistic transformation in the areas of operations, governance, risk, and investment, among others.

Strongest attribute:

Stakeholder buy-in: EY has doubled down on its immersion capabilities, offered through the firm's wavespace centers. The firm takes care to ensure decision-makers across the client enterprise are committed to transformation, ensuring that strategies put in place survive long after the consulting engagement.

Mercer

Mercer is a full service rewards management solutions provider, offering services across the entire spectrum of benefits for employers and employees. The firm leverages its breadth of rewards management capabilities to bring tailored advisory teams to DB and DC clients. The firm's approach to DB stresses agility when faced with market and regulatory volatility.

For DC, Mercer seeks to use employee freedoms in retirement benefits selection to improve individual outcomes while providing employers with the right tools to ensure effective utilization and a positive experience for the workforce.

Woven into both DB and DC client plan strategies, Mercer's financial wellness advisory seeks to take individualism in retirement futures a step further, providing employees with the tools and information necessary to better understand their current and future financial status. Employees equipped with this knowledge are more financially secure, and the firm helps clients' workforces reach this stage to improve productivity, engagement, and retention.

From an overarching financial management perspective, Mercer's holistic view on benefits through its breadth of services is advantageous. The firm takes a full picture view of client spending on rewards to establish strategies from a total rewards perspective that encourages employee participation and satisfaction while remaining cognizant of costs, ROI, and VOI.

Strongest attribute(s):

Needs assessment: Mercer's significant breadth of services in the retirement benefits space, including advisory, technology, and administration, gives the firm a strong data set from which to understand client needs through best practices and benchmarking.  The firm is effective in securing stakeholder buy-in through demonstrable results.

PwC

PwC provides a series of advisory services to DB and DC clients, including pensions strategy, risk and cash flow optimization, plan design, transformation, M&A services, and financial management. The firm continues to develop its advisory in this area through its technology-enabled consulting core tenet.

PwC smartly uses technology solutions to reduce burden on clients in management of retirement benefits through improved automation, reporting, and transparency, allowing greater focus on strategic thinking over daily operations.

Leveraging its significant breadth of capabilities across multiple service lines, PwC's approach to retirement benefits covers a wide spectrum of services in tune with the most critical concerns of clients today. Guided through thought leadership on major impacts to the retirement market as well as continued development of technology-enabled solutions, PwC's advisory in this area provides holistic transformation that reduces risk, streamlines processes, and improves ROI.

Strongest attribute(s):

Internal client insight: Derived through its analytics platforms and 'glocal' knowledge, PwC provides strong quantitative and qualitative insights for clients contending with increasingly diverse challenges.  The firm is effective in establishing baselines of current performance and conveying the impacts of transformation on clients' bottom lines as well as the employee experience.

Strategy: With its strong internal client insight capabilities that continue to adapt and evolve to markets and client demands, PwC is well positioned to provide functional internal strategies that lead to financially sound retirement benefits plans with optimal utilization derived from workforce assessment and engagement. Matthew Merker is a Senior Analyst with ALM Intelligence, providing competitive intelligence in the management consulting industry. Matthew has researched the benefits consulting industry for over four years, bringing in-depth analysis of defined benefit, defined contribution, private exchange, health, and well-being. Previously, he has worked as an Associate and Senior Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, providing management consulting services for public sector clients, including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and others.