Profile: Towers Watson & Co (TW.N)

Towers Watson & Co. (Towers Watson), incorporated on February 17, 1958, is a global professional services company. The Company offers solutions in the areas of employee benefits, talent management, rewards, and risk and capital management. Towers Watson offers its clients services across three business segments: Benefits, Risk and Financial Services, and Talent and Rewards. The Company focuses on delivering consulting services and solutions that help organizations anticipate, identify and utilize opportunities in benefits and human capital management. It also advises the insurance industry on a range of strategic and risk management issues and it helps clients mitigate risk through insurance, reinsurance and capital markets transactions. On December 31, 2010, Towers Watson purchased Aliquant, a privately-held, full-service health and welfare benefits administration outsourcing firm. On January 31, 2011, Towers Watson purchased EMB, a specialist property/casualty consulting and software company. On May 29, 2012, the Company acquired Extend Health, Inc. In November 2012, the Company acquired DaVinci Consulting Group.

Benefits Segment

The Benefits segment provides benefits consulting and administration services through four primary lines of business. The lines of business within the Benefits segment are Retirement; Health and Group Benefits; technology and Administration Solutions, and International Consulting. Its Retirement Consulting, which comprises a substantial portion of the Benefits segment’s revenue and profit, supports organizations worldwide in designing, managing, and administering all types of retirement plans.

The Company helps clients assess the effects of changing workforce demographics on their retirement plans, cash flow requirements, and retiree benefit adequacy and security. Towers Watson provides actuarial services to more of the top 300 pension funds worldwide. In the United States, it provides actuarial services to three of the four corporate-sponsored defined benefit plans (based on total pension plan assets), and in the United Kingdom, the Company is an advisor to almost half of the 100 corporate pension funds.

The Company’s Retirement Consulting Services include retirement strategy and plan design; actuarial services and related support; retirement financial management; settlement solutions; compliance and governance strategies; risk management, and defined contribution solutions. Through Health and Group Benefits, the Company provides plan management consulting across the full spectrum of health and group benefits programs, including health, dental, disability, life and other coverage. It also advise clients on emerging issues specific to their interests and needs, including the impact of health care reform legislation on their plan strategy and related health plan changes, and the implementation and monitoring of new programs such as wellness or care management. Its global services include program strategy, design and pricing; health condition management consulting; pharmacy benefit management consulting; workforce well-being evaluation and wellness and health promotion consulting; performance measurement and monitoring; development of funding strategies and forecasting, budgeting and reserve setting; vendor evaluation, selection and management, and claims audits and pre- and post-implementation audits. Towers Watson provides expertise in dealing with international human capital management and related benefits and compensation advice for corporate headquarters and their overseas subsidiaries. Through its global specialists and in cooperation with its local offices worldwide, it helps multi-national companies on a range of issues, including: financial, accounting, cost and risk-control solutions for employee benefit plans globally, global actuarial services, and cross-border support for benefit plan consolidation in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

Risk and Financial Services segment

The Risk and Financial Services segment has three lines of business, which include Risk Consulting and Software; Investment Consulting and Solutions, and Reinsurance and Insurance Brokerage. Risk Consulting and Software provides risk consulting and financial modeling software solutions primarily to the insurance industry. Its associates use analytical skills to solve practical business problems facing the insurance industry by applying the latest techniques and software solutions to help its clients improve business performance and create competitive advantage. Its Risk Consulting and Software services include financial and regulatory reporting; enterprise risk and capital management; M&A and corporate restructuring; product and market strategies; financial modeling software and implementation support, and integrated consulting and risk transfer. The Company provides a range of enterprise risk management services to help insurance companies identify and control their key risks, enhance risk-adjusted returns and meet strategic objectives. It is a provider of actuarial valuation and due diligence support for insurance industry mergers, acquisitions and restructurings. It also helps its clients value liabilities and calculate economic capital for financial reporting and management purposes and it helps them respond to regulatory changes that impact financial reporting, such as Solvency II. In addition, It provide other services, such as product development, predictive modeling, strategies for entry into new markets, claim consulting and catastrophe modeling. Its Investment business helps clients manage investment complexity, establish their risk tolerance and improve governance. The Company's Investment services include development of investment policy, governance and risk assessment; investment strategy; Structured products design; manager structure and selection; manager monitoring and evaluation; performance reporting, and implemented consulting. Reinsurance and Insurance Brokerage provides a range of risk transfer solutions, principally reinsurance brokerage services. Investment Consulting and Solutions provides consulting and solutions focused on investment strategy, risk assessment, asset allocation, and investment manager selection to institutional investors, primarily pension plans.

Talent and Rewards segment

The Talent and Rewards segment has three primary lines of business. Executive Compensation advises its clients’ management and boards of directors on executive pay and incentive programs, including base pay, annual bonus, long-term incentives, perquisites and other benefits; Rewards, Talent and Communication provides consulting on alignment, design and delivery of employee rewards (pay and incentives), talent management programs and processes, including career development, performance management and leadership succession, and organization and employee communication and change management. Its primary practice areas are talent management, which help organizations develop integrated programs and processes to identify clients’ leadership and workforce needs, develop leaders and employees, and provide performance management to align goals and incentives for those employees and leaders with the critical drivers of business performance; Rewards, which provide the strategy, design and execution support for compensation programs to help clients optimize their reward spend and ensure their programs drive the behaviors and performance required to meet key business goals, and Communication and Change Management, which offer expertise in change management, organizational effectiveness and communication to support its consulting services and help drive employee engagement and align behavior with business results. Data, Surveys and Technology provides human capital data, analytics and technology solutions, such as compensation benchmarking data, employee opinion surveys, HR function metrics, and reward administration and talent management technology solutions, to enable benchmarking, evaluation of return on investments, resource allocation decisions and effective administration of human resources programs.

The Company competes with Marsh & McLennan company, McLennan, Aon, Deloitte, Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Willis.