The Fletcher School

Charles Bralver (F ’75), Mercer Oliver Wyman

Charles Bralver (F ’75) discussed the broad field of the financial services industry with Fletcher students on Monday, September 27, 2004, as part of the International Business Program’s Global Speaker Series. Bralver continued an annual tradition of coming to Fletcher to speak about risk and value in financial services and to recruit graduating students to apply for jobs at Mercer Oliver Wyman, the financial services strategy and risk management consulting firm where he is Vice Chairman.

Mercer Oliver Wyman is a world leader in capital risk management and strategy consulting, with 750 employees spread over 26 offices in 13 countries. Bralver’s clients are among the world’s top financial institutions, including Citigroup, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and UBS.

Bralver has 21 years of experience in the industry, and currently leads the firm’s North American business. He was a founding partner of the former Oliver, Wyman & Co. and from 1999 to 2002 was Vice Chairman of the firm’s Corporate Strategy and Global Client Management unit. From 1991 to 1999 he led the firm’s Capital Markets practice and from 1988 to 1991, he was based in the London office, serving as the Managing Director for Europe.

In his presentation, Bralver discussed in detail the various aspects of his firm’s business, and gave students a glimpse into the life of a financial services consultant. He began his presentation by explaining the principal categories of Mercer Oliver Wyman’s practice and how they contribute to allowing their clients to drive shareholder value creation. The risk management division is the firm’s largest practice area, created in 1988. The company also focuses on economic performance and economic capital, and their client base in this area includes over half of the world’s top 100 financial institutions.

Mercer Oliver Wyman consults CFOs and CROs (chief risk officers) on various strategic finance challenges, including those of executive management, line management, external constituents, and staff functions to determine how best to tackle issues. Using the metric of economic capital to measure risk-adjusted performance, consultants work with clients to drive management decisions at multiple levels – corporate, business unit, and customer, asset, and transactional. The end goal of these processes is to develop an integrated planning and management system of risk, capital, and value.

Bralver also went into detail about his company’s approach to governance issues that his clients must deal with. Specifically, Mercer Oliver Wyman works with the boards of directors of its clients to solve problems relating to the uncertainty of the board’s role in the company, concern about the level of risk expertise on the board, and dissatisfaction with the explanation of risk provided by the company’s management. On the other side, Mercer Oliver Wyman works with management to strengthen its relationship with the board. They may consult management on issues of its role in relation to the board’s role, concern that certain types of risk are unaddressed by recent investments in risk management, and uncertainty about what organizational structures best balance the business benefits and fiduciary aspects of risk management. Mercer Oliver Wyman works with clients to develop risk reports that are unambiguous, manageable and intelligible to non-expert board members, to ensure that boards do not attempt to micromanage the company’s operations, and to promote a culture of accountability.

After his comprehensive and detailed presentation, Bralver turned the stage over to Meg Graham, Mercer Oliver Wyman’s recruitment coordinator. Graham moved away from the complexities of finance strategy and risk management and discussed the topic that was on the minds of most students in the room – how to get a job at Mercer Oliver Wyman. Graham ticked off an impressive list of incentives and benefits of Mercer Oliver Wyman employees, including director promotions in an average of six to nine years, uncapped performance-based raises, participation in a company-wide bonus pool, and opportunities to work on six continents, to name a few.

Graham stressed that Mercer Oliver Wyman is not your typical financial services consulting company. Unlike its competitors, Mercer Oliver Wyman does not have title distinctions among consultants, there is an open-door policy into all directors’ offices, rapid growth in responsibility and compensation, a 55-hour week with rare weekend work, and in-office happy hours every Friday. “We look at all our hires as potential directors,” Graham said.

While the perks and benefits are very attractive, Bralver was aware that some potential applicants might have been scared off by the complexities of his presentation. But he assured the audience that the business of risk management was not as abstruse as some may fear. He has a policy that he affectionately calls “derivatives for grandmothers.” “If I can’t explain a transaction to my grandmother so she can understand it,” Bralver said, “then we shouldn’t be doing it.”

Article by Evan Pressman, MALD '05