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Towers Watson Retirement Plan for US Employees
The Willis Towers Watson Savings Plan for U.S. Employees is the primary 401(k) vehicle for the global advisory, broking, and solutions firm's domestic...
Towers Watson Retirement Plan for US Employees
The Willis Towers Watson Savings Plan for U.S. Employees is the primary 401(k) vehicle for the global advisory, broking, and solutions firm's domestic workforce. Established as a defined-contribution plan, it serves over 23,000 eligible employees, providing tax-advantaged retirement accumulation through salary deferrals and company matching contributions. The plan is sponsored by Willis Towers Watson PLC, the publicly traded professional services company formed from the 2016 merger of Willis Group and Towers Watson, and is administered via Empower Retirement's recordkeeping platform. The plan's investment menu is structured to offer participants diversified core exposures across public equities, fixed income, and target-date fund suites. The Willis Towers Watson Savings Plan Trust Target Date Funds serve as the qualified default investment alternative, managed with an asset-allocation glidepath designed by the firm's own investment consulting practice. This creates a distinctive dynamic — the plan sponsor is also a leading institutional investment advisor, meaning the menu design and fund selection benefit from the same internal research and manager evaluation capabilities that Willis Towers Watson sells to corporate and public pension clients globally. With a participant base of 23,503 employees and administrative oversight from plan fiduciaries inside Willis Towers Watson, the savings plan acts as both a workforce benefit and a captive demonstration of the firm's investment thinking. Empower Retirement handles recordkeeping, custody, and participant servicing. The plan sits alongside the Towers Watson Pension Plan for U.S. Employees, a related defined-benefit plan that covers legacy employees from predecessor entities, making the combined retirement ecosystem one of the larger corporate pension footprints in the professional services sector. The plan's structural differentiator is the sponsor-fiduciary overlap: Willis Towers Watson runs retirement assets for thousands of institutional clients while also governing its own employees' retirement pools. This creates an unusual alignment dynamic where the firm's investment committee decisions are implicitly performance-tested against the retirement outcomes of its own partners and staff — a governance pressure rare among corporate plans where the sponsor typically lacks in-house investment expertise.
General information
Firm type
Pension Fund
Year founded
1936
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
New York
Corporate office
New York, NY, United States
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who sponsors the Towers Watson Retirement Plan for US Employees, and what is the corporate relationship?
The plan is sponsored by Willis Towers Watson PLC, the publicly traded global advisory and broking firm formed from the 2016 merger of Willis Group and Towers Watson. As sponsor, Willis Towers Watson appoints plan fiduciaries and determines the investment menu structure. The firm also serves as the employer for all plan participants, making this a captive corporate defined-contribution plan rather than a multi-employer or union arrangement.
How is the plan's investment menu constructed, and who selects the funds?
The investment menu is designed by plan fiduciaries appointed by Willis Towers Watson, who leverage the firm's internal investment research and consulting infrastructure. The lineup includes core indexed and actively managed options spanning public equities, fixed income, and the plan's proprietary Willis Towers Watson Savings Plan Trust Target Date Funds, which serve as the qualified default investment alternative. Fund selection follows the same manager research discipline that Willis Towers Watson provides to institutional clients globally.
Who handles recordkeeping and administration for the plan?
Empower Retirement serves as the plan's recordkeeper, providing custody, participant website access, customer service, and transaction processing. Empower is one of the largest retirement plan administrators in the United States, and all participant-level interactions — contribution changes, loan requests, distribution processing — flow through Empower's platform.
How does this 401(k) plan relate to the Towers Watson Pension Plan for US Employees?
The Towers Watson Pension Plan for US Employees is a separate defined-benefit pension plan sponsored by the same entity, covering legacy employees from predecessor organizations. The savings plan is the active defined-contribution vehicle for current employees, while the pension plan represents frozen or legacy defined-benefit obligations. Together they form a dual retirement architecture common among large professional services firms with merger histories.
Can outside investors or non-employees participate in this plan?
No. The Towers Watson Savings Plan for US Employees is a captive single-employer 401(k) plan available exclusively to eligible employees of Willis Towers Watson and its participating subsidiaries. It does not accept external institutional allocators, does not market itself to the public, and functions solely as an employee benefit vehicle rather than an externally facing investment product.
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