Global Benefits

Multinational companies face constant challenges as they globalize and expand their diverse and international workforce:

• Corporate governance
• Need for operational and cost efficiency/improved margins
• Increased complexity of managing employee benefits and compensation globally in a consistent manner
• Balancing central control of employee benefit programs with ensuring that benefit packages are appropriate for each locale

Aon Hewitt is helping multinational companies meet these challenges through numerous services:

International Group Benefits Brokering, Plan Design and Actuarial Work

Historically many multinationals operated in a decentralized management model. But today’s market forces and converging international accounting standards are forcing organizations to streamline their operations and take a more active role in managing employee benefits because of significant financial, legal and human capital risks.

Many companies are looking at health care group purchasing and multinational health care and retirement pooling programs as a means to cut costs, increase profitability and foster growth.

Aon Hewitt’s global network of consultants can help you find the right solution for your company. We can review your existing plans and benefit costs, as well as available economies of scale, and develop a global benefit strategy and process to support your business goals. We can also engage local benefits brokers to recommend market-competitive plans, conduct local bidding and support local execution in each of your locations around the world.

We have one of the largest, wholly-owned networks of worldwide offices and actively manage a benefits network to provide support and advice to clients in more than 100 countries, with the ability to deliver locally-appropriate employee benefit services. This lets us provide world-class strategic advice to headquarters and satellite offices alike, while helping you implement benefits policy locally but under global corporate policy guidelines and control.

In addition to broking, we also conduct benefit audits and plan designs and provide benchmarking, financial benefits accounting and global actuarial advice.

Financing Benefit Risk

We help companies explore alternative ways to finance benefit risk, such as captives, multinational pooling, vendor selection management and global brokering.

Aon Hewitt, along with Aon Global Risk Consultants and Aon Benfield, has the scale scope, resources and experience to develop globally integrated employee benefit solutions. We have an unsurpassed geographical presence and capability along with a unique combination of expertise in:

• Global benefits consulting, including mergers and acquisitions
• Captive and regulatory consulting
• Captive management and administration
• Actuarial, tax and accounting issues
• Reinsurance and alternative risk transfer

Our proven approach and systems ensure partnering at the strategic and tactical (implementation) level, supported by improved financial management, governance and administrative processes that deliver distinctive value.

Greater Insight: a Web-based Global Benefits and Compensation Management Platform

Aon Hewitt has recently released its next-generation global benefits management platform, which leapfrogs other commercially available systems and offers greater flexibility and advanced analytic capabilities.

The tool, Greater Insight, helps companies with multiple operations analyze and manage their benefit and compensation programs’ financial and provisional data. Features and capabilities include:

• Discrete and dynamic data entry promotes accuracy of information; functionality includes radio buttons and dropdown menus for ease and control of data input.
• Built-in mandatory and statutory compliance checks at the point of data entry, along with reporting on non-compliance items and regular updates on legislative changes, aids in overall compliance.
• Powerful real-time analytics, including tables and graphs, help you assess the cost of programs relative to payroll, by geography and by type of program, and identify trends.
• Customized side-by-side reporting across multiple geographic locations helps you benchmark programs to common practices and statutory regulations.
• Over 70 standard pre-populated templates aid in data capture for all benefit programs, compensation and HR policies, with the ability to add customized templates.

Together these features help you make better compensation and benefit decisions and drive:

• Fundamental understanding of the true costs of various programs and return on investment.
• Real-time information improves your ability to develop cost-savings strategies, including but not limited to, multinational benefits pooling, preferred providers, other aggregate benefits funding mechanisms and modification of local plan designs in response to data analysis.
• Improved consistency across countries.
• Assurance that programs are in compliance with local legislation.

For more information about Aon global benefits consulting pleasecontact us.