Jay Love

Jay Love has has been a knowledge broker with Mercer for 22 years—he’s a lifer. He says he was drawn to consulting because it allows him to explore a variety of different topics, and also find new ways to approach client outcomes. “At Mercer, I have the opportunity to go off and think about issues and develop new ideas, it keeps me engaged in the work,” he says.

At Mercer, Love works with large public and private pension plans offering a mix of qualitative and quantitative expertise. Over his career, he has also worked on asset liability modeling for corporate defined benefit plans and developed the stochastic economic simulation model that Mercer uses in its asset liability studies.

Over his career, Love has worked in several groups within Mercer’s consulting universe. He says that by working with such a wide variety of internal teams, he can develop new insights to share with his clients, which is critically important in today’s market. “Consultants can’t go in and provide plain vanilla advice anymore,” he contends. “The issues in investing are too complex. We have to find ways to provide value that goes beyond performance calculations.”

Providing strategic value to clients has also been important as retirement pivots from pension plans toward defined contribution plans, an area where Love expects to see consultants play a larger role in the future. “Defined contribution plans and wealth advisory are two of our biggest growth areas. They define the next chapter for retirement in many ways.”