Mercer DC Master Trust

A trustee board with independent directors holds the fiduciary and governance obligations. Mercer acts as the delegated investment manager under a fiduciary-manager arrangement, responsible for fund selection, portfolio construction, and ongoing monitoring. The trust is authorised and regulated by The Pensions Regulator.

In a standard master trust, the trustee typically outsources discrete functions — investment consulting, administration, and legal — to separate providers. Under the fiduciary-manager model, the trustee appoints Mercer to handle the investment function end-to-end on a delegated basis, making Mercer responsible for tactical asset allocation and manager selection within the strategic parameters the trustee sets. This concentrates responsibility in a single entity rather than distributing it across multiple advisers.

The trust is a signatory to the Mansion House Compact, committing to allocate 5% of its default-fund assets to unlisted equities by 2030. Its existing alternative exposures include the Mercer Active UK Property Fund and the Mercer Global Listed Infrastructure Equity Fund. The unlisted-equity commitment suggests a buildout into private equity and venture capital, executed through external fund managers rather than direct co-investment.

Mercer's delegated investment team selects and monitors third-party asset managers across all asset classes, leveraging the firm's global institutional research platform. The trust does not employ internal deal teams and does not make direct co-investments or direct private-asset purchases — it accesses alternatives through pooled fund vehicles and separate mandates managed by external GPs.

The trust is a signatory to the UK Stewardship Code and has joined Nature Action 100, the global investor initiative targeting corporate action on biodiversity and nature loss. These commitments apply across the default fund strategies, integrating stewardship expectations into manager selection and ongoing monitoring.

SmartPath follows a target-date glidepath approach, allocating across developed-market equities, fixed income, and alternatives that shift from growth to preservation as members near retirement. The growth-phase allocation includes dedicated real-asset and infrastructure sleeves through Mercer-branded pooled funds, with the planned addition of unlisted-equity exposure by 2030.

Mercer is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh McLennan (NYSE: MMC), the global professional-services firm. The DC Master Trust sits within Mercer's UK fiduciary-management and administration business, which operates under regulatory oversight from The Pensions Regulator separately from MMC's insurance-broking and consulting divisions.