Aon plc is a global professional services firm that offers a range of risk-mitigation products. Aon has approximately 50,000 employees across 120 countries.
A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any program, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a U.S. federal tax and labor law that establishes minimum standards for pension plans in private industry. It contains rules on the federal income tax effects of transactions associated with employee benefit plans. ERISA was enacted to protect the interests of employee benefit plan participants and their beneficiaries by:
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a United States federally chartered corporation created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private defined benefit pension plans, provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits, and keep pension insurance premiums at the lowest level necessary to carry out its operations. Subject to other statutory limitations, PBGC's single-employer insurance program pays pension benefits up to the maximum guaranteed benefit set by law to participants who retire at 65. The benefits payable to insured retirees who start their benefits at ages other than 65 or elect survivor coverage are adjusted to be equivalent in value. The maximum monthly guarantee for the multiemployer program is far lower and more complicated.
Pensions in the United States consist of the Social Security system, public employees retirement systems, as well as various private pension plans offered by employers, insurance companies, and unions.
Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., doing business as Marsh McLennan, is a global professional services firm, headquartered in New York City with businesses in insurance brokerage, risk management, reinsurance services, talent management, investment advisory, and management consulting. Its four main operating companies are Marsh, Guy Carpenter, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman.
Towers Perrin was a professional services firm specializing in human resources and financial services consulting, which merged in January 2010 with Watson Wyatt to form Towers Watson. The firm was a provider of reinsurance intermediary services and was active in the actuarial consulting arena with its Tillinghast insurance consulting practice.
The human resource consulting industry has emerged from management consulting and addresses human resource management tasks and decisions.
Howard Weizmann was deputy director of the United States Office of Personnel Management. During his tenure, he led efforts to reform the Federal hiring process and worked to help modernize the Federal pension system. He also was responsible for the oversight of the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) which manages the annual charitable contributions process for the Federal government. Previous to his appointment, Weizmann served as president of the Private Sector Council (PSC), part of the Partnership for Public Service, a not-for-profit organization that pairs private sector advisers with federal employees to improve agency performance management.
Mercer is an American consulting firm founded in 1945. It is one of the four operating subsidiaries of global professional services firm Marsh McLennan. Mercer is headquartered in New York City with offices in 43 countries and operations in 130 countries. The company primarily provides human resources and financial services consulting services to its clients.
Wendell Milliman (1905–1976) was a founder of Milliman, Inc., formerly Milliman & Robertson, one of the largest actuarial and business consulting firms in the world. Starting as the Pacific Northwest's only independent consulting actuary in a small two-room Seattle office in 1947, Milliman co-founded, with Stuart Robertson, a company that grew to encompass offices across the nation, first on the West Coast, then in Milwaukee, and then in more than 30 locations throughout the country. It also has offices in 16 countries across the globe. Based on a profit-sharing model that brings together independent consultants under a common corporate banner, Milliman, Inc. looked for and found new opportunities to provide actuarial services to insurers and pension planners as the United States dramatically changed and its economy grew during the post-World War II years.
Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc, also known as JLT Group or simply JLT, was a British multinational corporation that had its headquarters in London, England. It provided insurance, reinsurance, employment benefits advice and brokerage services. It was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until it was acquired by Marsh McLennan in April 2019.
Milliman, formerly Milliman & Robertson, is an international actuarial and consulting firm based in Seattle, Washington.
Pension administration in the United States is the act of performing various types of yearly service on an organizational retirement plan, such as a 401(k), profit sharing plan, defined benefit plan, or cash balance plan. Increasingly, employers are also implementing these plan types in combination arrangements for greater contribution potential, such as the pairing of a cash balance plan with some variety of 401(k). The pension administration ensures that an organizational retirement plan neither discriminates against lower-level employees nor becomes an abusive tax shelter. Stress tests include the average benefits test, average deferral percentage, and minimum coverage. Yearly pension administration work involves filing a Form 5500 with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Organizations such as the National Institute of Pension Administrators and the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries offer several professional designations to those who do this work. Pension Administration firms often rely on financial brokers for their business prospects, although they do have other referral sources. Some pension administration firms assign financial advisory work to an internal unit and also accept referrals from an independent broker network. These brokers are often associated with firms like Raymond James, Edward Jones Investments and Morgan Stanley. The brokers may be employees of these firms or independent contractors. The plan assets of the organizational retirement plans in question sometimes reside on a trading platform that the administration firm control. More often, large financial institutions that provide a variety of investment options for plan participants hold the assets. Large firms include Principal Financial Group, John Hancock Insurance, ING Group and Mass Mutual. Pension administrators often coordinate with public accounting firms, as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) requires plans with more than one hundred participants to undergo an independent audit each year. For defined benefit plans, the pension administration firm must employ an actuary to certify the plan's present and future benefit liabilities and compliance with IRS minimum funding standards. Pension administration firms with a large block of defined benefit plans often directly employ an actuary. Firms that only work on a small collection of defined benefit plans tend to retain the actuary as an independent contractor. The actuary completes contribution calculations for the plan and provides a Schedule SB so that the administrators may file the yearly Form 5500. Without this Schedule the yearly filing for a defined benefit plan would be incomplete. Other than the IRS, organizational retirement plan operation and maintenance falls under the regulation of the United States Department of Labor.
Towers Watson & Co. was a global professional services firm. Its principal lines of business were risk management and human resource consulting. It also had actuarial and investment consulting practices.
Segal is a benefits and human resources consulting firm headquartered in New York City, with 1,100 employees throughout the U.S. and Canada. It is the parent of Segal Marco Advisors, Segal Select Insurance Services, Inc., andSegal Benz.
Aon Hewitt was a provider of human capital and management consulting services headquartered in Lincolnshire, Illinois in the United States. From 500 offices in 120 countries, it provided consulting, outsourcing, and reinsurance brokerage services. The "Aon Hewitt" brand and legal entities have now been absorbed into the "Aon" business, leaving obsolete the names "Hewitt" and "Aon Hewitt."
Willis Towers Watson plc, branded as WTW and stylised in its logo as wtw, is a British-American multinational company providing insurance services. The company was founded in 2016, following a merger of the Willis Group and Towers Watson.
LifeWorks, formerly known as Morneau Shepell, was a human resources services and technology company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1966, LifeWorks served approximately 24,000 clients in North America. Besides North American offices, LifeWorks also had offices outside North America, including Brazil, Australia and the United Kingdom. LifeWorks was a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with market capitalization of $2 billion.
US$1.68 billion (2009) [1] 