Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company, today announced it will provide delegated investment services to Crawford & Company, the world's largest independent provider of claims management and related solutions to the risk management and insurance industry as well as self-insured entities. Hewitt has provided Crawford & Company with a variety of investment and actuarial consulting services since 2002.

“Hewitt has a long-standing reputation as a trusted and independent pension investment advisor. Given the success of our existing partnership, it was only natural to extend our relationship to include delegated investment services,” said Bruce Swain, chief financial officer at Crawford & Company.

Hewitt’s delegated investment services provide U.S. pension plan sponsors with a more efficient and effective way to manage their plans amidst an increasingly complex and highly volatile investment environment. Leveraging Hewitt’s 35 years of investment consulting and actuarial expertise, Hewitt works closely with a plan sponsor’s investment committee to define investment policy guidelines, funding policies, appropriate risk posture, and target asset allocations.

Once complete, Hewitt assumes responsibility—including co-fiduciary obligations—for managing plan investments. Unlike most outsourced investment solutions, all fees associated with Hewitt’s delegated investment services are fully disclosed to clients. Any investment manager fee reductions negotiated by Hewitt accrue directly to the plan.

Hewitt’s delegated investment services leverage Hewitt’s global research and pension risk management solutions to help plan sponsors better understand and manage the assets and liabilities in their pension plans. Using its pension risk management tools, Hewitt is able to monitor the assets and liabilities of a company’s pension plan on a frequent basis. This enables quicker, more informed investment decisions, and better management of surplus risk.

“Managing pension investments is not a core competency for most plan sponsors. They are having trouble choosing from a growing array of options that will maximize asset returns, control volatility, and decrease risk. With pension assets dropping dramatically over the past year, the pressure to ‘get it right’ is even stronger in today’s market,” said Bradley Smith, head of Hewitt’s U.S. Retirement Investment practice.