“We are a small cap plc in a period of financial recovery. The Remuneration Committee would like to carry out a review of its advisers/consultants. We currently use Aon Hewitt New Bridge Street but want to test them against the market. We are keen to have a “one stop shop” for all senior executive remuneration and related governance advice. Would anyone recommend alternative consultants for our short list of candidates?”
We just moved from TowersWatson to Kepler having also consider AonHewitt NBS. Kepler just edged out AonHewitt NBS for their personal style. The only drawback, as I understood it, was that they didn’t have their own research like the larger firms do.
We have been happy with Kepler to date.
We use Deloitte and have no complaints.
We had a beauty parade (candidates Hewitt NBS, Kepler and PwC) and chose PwC, chiefly because they quoted very competitively, although it was a close call and we very much liked Kepler’s style. PwC do like to maximise fees in the interim, so we have to keep a close eye on “fee creep” but they have been easy to work with and pretty switched on, so we are happy with the decision.
We use Kepler who are responsive, can provide updates on Governance and benchmarking. We also use Grant Thornton on general remuneration matters.
As an alternative to one of the big firms, you could try FIT who are a spin off from New Bridge Street.
We use a combination of advisers – Aon Hewitt for pension and option advice (they are also Group pension fund actuary), McLagan International Inc. for market conditions and PwC for certain other services (PwC are auditors so their services are limited and subject to additional approval).
In the past we have used Kepler Associates who we found to be very responsive.