Hewitt Offering Designed to Manage Risk and Reward

A Hewitt news release said the new offering includes two tools:

• The   Pension Risk Index (PRI) gives a snapshot assessment of the risk a company faces as result of its pension plan exposures — looking both at balance sheet vulnerability and potential impact on earnings.These are part of a broader package of pension risk measures which are summarized in the Pension Risk Scorecard — a collection of 10 different risk measures on a client-specific basis, benchmarked against the overall market.
• The Pension Surplus Index   is an interactive series of indexes, showing the aggregate pension plan funded status for companies in the Fortune 500, FTSE100, and other market indexes.

Hewitt is launching the new program in both North America and the U.K. to help clients optimize their pension risk-reward equation, according to the release.

“Events in financial markets in recent months have given a stark reminder of the centrality of risk to many organizations. Pension plan sponsors ‘ attitudes toward risk are also changing at an unprecedented pace, “ said Andy Cox, head of Global Benefits Consulting at Hewitt, in the news release. “ In a very short period of time, we have seen major changes in the way in which risk is perceived and how companies react in terms of the financing of their pension plans”

This heightened emphasis on risk has led many sponsors to believe they should not take any risks in relation to pensions, Hewitt claimed.

“A key differentiator of Hewitt ‘ s Global Risk Services is that we look at both sides of the equation — risk and return are just the two sides of one coin. By identifying and quantifying the risks in a pension plan, we can help sponsors to take the right actions, “ Cox added.