EXCLUSIVE: Talent, health and wealth consulting firm Mercer has partnered benefits software provider Thomsons Online Benefits to offer global benefits management solutions for multi-national organisations.
The partnership will see Mercer provide employee benefits brokerage and consulting services, while Thomsons will offer streamlined administration, automation and communication of benefit programmes through its employee benefits software as a service (Saas) platform Darwin.
Both organisations will continue to provide their own local market solutions where appropriate.
Michael Whitfield (pictured), chief executive officer at Thomsons Online Benefits, said: “Over the last 10 years we have built up a strong relationship with Mercer with a host of global enterprise clients. It’s a natural next step to formalise our collaboration and offer multinationals the best of both solutions.
“By implementing a consistent global benefits approach, our shared clients have already seen increases in employee engagement of benefits. We’ve also significantly managed our clients’ benefits spend through Mercer’s powerful global broking and consultancy, alongside Darwin’s reduction of benefits administration time. This is freeing up HR leaders to work on strategic initiatives delivering more business impact to the wider organisation.”
Graham Pearce, head of Mercer’s International Consulting Group, added: “We’ve formed this alliance with Thomsons given its strength in benefits technology innovation and its ability to scale benefits delivery globally while taking account of local market nuances.
“We expect the relationship to evolve over time with new offerings announced in the future. Many of these will centre on robust and comprehensive data analytics, financial, vendor and design data from Mercer coupled with engagement and workforce data from Darwin.”
