DC Nexus™: Plan Sponsors

Delivering Results for Plan Sponsors

As a plan sponsor, you face ever-increasing scrutiny associated with the oversight of the investment options within your company’s defined contribution (DC) plan. Despite often having less time and resources than desired, you must effectively manage escalating fiduciary risks. DC Nexus (Nexus) facilitates the successful execution of your fiduciary responsibilities by providing a variety of resources, at no additional cost, including:

• Detailed analytics tools that allow you (and your consultant) to thoroughly measure plan performance quantitatively and assess alternatives to make more informed decisions.
• Industry-shaping research and white papers from Aon Hewitt and leading investment management firms, to enable you to be more informed about current retirement trends and opportunities.
• A proprietary and industry-first institutional investment exchange built to facilitate increased fee transparency and to provide better control of your plan expenses.

Leveraging Aon Hewitt’s Independence

Nexus is built upon Aon Hewitt’s position as the largest independent provider of DC administration services, with over $345 billion in total client assets. We have always provided our clients with unfettered access to the entire universe of investment options, which results in plans designed to incorporate best-in-class asset managers across the board.

Nexus complements our open-architecture approach to DC administration with a rich tool set, providing ready access to up-to-date information on your DC plan and its underlying investment options. The solutions within Nexus are designed to supplement and enhance—not replace—the ongoing governance process currently employed by each plan fiduciary. With Aon Hewitt, plan fiduciaries always retain complete control over their DC plan.

Innovative Solutions

Aon Hewitt listens closely to our clients, and understands the challenges posed to DC plan fiduciaries. Nexus addresses the needs of our clients by delivering timely data and insightful information, which can be readily accessed whenever needed.

Many of our DC administration clients utilize the expertise of independent investment consultants, and Nexus is designed to support both plan sponsors and their external trusted advisors. Leveraging the data Aon Hewitt maintains as DC plan administrator, Nexus supplements the existing governance process employed by each plan fiduciary. The three primary components of Nexus are detailed below.

• Analytics
  

  Nexus offers detailed information on the plan’s current fund options as well as critical plan-level statistics. The solution combines the daily information unique to each DC plan along with outside market data, providing up-to-date insights to the specific plan whenever needed.

  Further, we have partnered with eVestment Alliance, the leading institutional database, whose coverage includes virtually all relevant managers within the DC industry. Additionally, investment managers participating on Nexus are required to provide supplemental information specifically relevant in the DC environment.

  Together, the analytics solutions within Nexus provide timely and insightful information not available anywhere else in the industry in one solution.

• Education
  

  Nexus serves as an integrator—not just an aggregator—of compelling research relevant to the retirement industry. Nexus also allows plan sponsors to quickly obtain Aon Hewitt’s industry-leading research through a single point of access. In addition to Aon Hewitt’s proprietary research, Nexus contains white papers, analysis and research from leading investment management organizations.

• Exchange
  

  Building upon the information provided by asset managers, Nexus increases the transparency of investment alternatives. The solution helps plan fiduciaries (and/or their consultants) perform full price discovery on potential investment options much earlier in the selection process than what typically occurs today. The Exchange module leverages the forces of supply & demand, as well as open competition, to ensure that a “final and best” price is established before embarking on the difficult and qualitative task of identifying a winning manager from a set of finalists.

As with every aspect of Nexus, the Exchange seeks to complement and enhance the ongoing processes currently employed by plan fiduciaries.

DC Nexus meets the ever-growing needs of plan fiduciaries based on feedback from our clients and our industry experience.

To learn more, please email us.