Mercer and Thomsons Online Benefits form strategic alliance

Mercer and Thomsons Online Benefits have formed a strategic alliance. The two new partners will leverage each other's respective strengths; Mercer will deliver benefit programme coordination, management, monitoring, and reporting, while Thomsons Online Benefits will deliver its SaaS based Darwin online benefits management platform. Seeking to streamline their benefits programmes, the new alliance will be able to better serve their multinational clients with a single service.

Thomsons Online Benefits was founded in 2000, and underwent a venture capital backed management buyout in 2004. The company provides a range of packages that support businesses in the management of their benefit package. Its major solution is its Darwin platform - a Software as a Service offering. The platform provides an online space that is designed to allow employees to be engaged with their benefit packages, as well as a range of background resources for companies to reduce costs, manage risk and carry out effective administration. The company has more than 400 staff working across offices in London, UK, Burlingame, USA, Cluj, Romania, and Singapore.

To better serve multinationals seeking a managed benefit programme, Mercer and Thomsons Online Benefits recently announced a strategic alliance to better support multinationals. The combined package sees Mercer offer multinational clients employee benefits brokerage and consulting, including benefit programme coordination, management, monitoring, and reporting, which are then streamlined and automated through Thomsons Online Benefits’ Darwin platform. The two will continue to provide their individual solutions within the respective markets, as appropriate.

According to Jacques Goulet, President, Retirement, Health & Benefits from Mercer, says: “The HR environment is transforming at a global level; it’s difficult for clients operating in many geographies to consistently manage their global employee benefits in line with local legislation and workforce expectations.

Together with Thomsons, we can meet those needs. Mercer has a long heritage in and a deep understanding of global benefits and health management and combined with Darwin, Thomsons’ cutting edge global benefits technology; we’re now at the forefront of developments in this market.”

Michael Whitfield, CEO of Thomsons Online Benefits, comments: “Over the last ten years we have built up a strong relationship with Mercer with a host of global enterprise clients. It’s a natural next step to formalise our collaboration and offer multinationals the best of both solutions. By implementing a consistent global benefits approach, our shared clients have already seen increases in employee engagement of benefits. We’ve also significantly managed our clients’ benefits spend through Mercer’s powerful global broking and consultancy, alongside Darwin’s reduction of benefits administration time. This is freeing up HR leaders to work on strategic initiatives delivering more business impact to the wider organisation.”