Mercer Edge has officially been released for use by superannuation funds after being used for the past 12 months by Mercer in its corporate super arrangements.
The new platform is similar to the service provided by Link Group-owned Empirics, which offers predictive analytics to superannuation funds that are looking to grow and retain FUM.
Launching Mercer Edge yesterday, Mercer managing director and Pacific market leader Ben Walsh said data analytics is not new – but super funds have been slow to adopt it.
“The [superannuation] industry as a whole has gone through an intense period of regulatory introspection and has come out the other side and is very fixated on growth,” Mr Walsh said.
“Super funds have spent a lot of time and have invested a lot of activity in trying to understand [their data] – even at the most basic level.”
The most valuable aspect of Mercer Edge is the ability for a super fund to know exactly what its outflows are, and where they are coming from, he said.
Asked whether Mercer Edge could help a fund that was haemorrhaging FUM to ‘right the ship’, Mr Walsh divided the post-MySuper landscape into three types of funds.
“The current environment has those who are winning, those who are not sure and those probably aren’t going to make it,” he said.
By ‘make it’, Mr Walsh was referring to smaller funds that are likely to be forced to merge due to declining FUM.
“For funds thinking about that issue, this analysis might help with that,” Mr Walsh said.
“Our contention, essentially, is that an organisation that isn’t sure if they’re going to make it or not (maybe they’re not going to make it) can intervene and change their growth and sustainability profile. And this tool can help with that,” he said.
NGS Super is the sole client of Mercer Edge to date, but the service is available to all super funds that use Mercer as their administrator.
