#ShapingIndustries

1899

At our clients' side

From our earliest days, the cornerstone of our success has been that we put clients at the center of everything we do. While many other intermediaries focused on serving underwriters, our founders Henry Marsh and Donald McLennan innovated by putting clients’ needs first.

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1900

“Your problem is risk, not insurance”

We’ve always had a different perspective. Henry Marsh assessed risk not as an underwriter would, but according to the potential loss to the customer. A fire in a factory might cause a small amount of property damage, but in disrupting operations, it could contribute to the loss of business. Marsh increasingly offered risk management, not simply insurance. That’s why Marsh led the brokerage industry in hiring engineers to work with clients to reduce their risk. He believed that applying greater expertise would pay off in the long run.

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1901

Ingenious Solutions

The largest company at the turn of the 20th century was U.S. Steel. Marsh convinced its CEO to take advantage of the billion-dollar corporation’s scale and balance sheet by self-insuring for fire risks in its myriad factories, mines and warehouses—a highly innovative and cost-saving solution. Marsh opened a satellite office in New York City to service the business.

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1905

Teaming up

Rival brokers Henry Marsh and Donald McLennan met while separately pitching the Chicago Burlington & Quincy railroad. The directors of the railroad liked their pitches so much that they suggested their firms team up. They did just that, along with the Daniel Burrows Agency, and became one of the largest fire insurance brokers in the world.

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1910

Reliable Telecom

In 1910, Henry Marsh met the founder of American Telephone & Telegraph on a steamship liner to Europe. Playing the long game, Marsh waited until the ship approached New York on their return trip, and made his pitch, using the example of his firm’s work helping U.S. Steel self-insure as a case study. AT&T signed on, and we took on the challenge of reducing fire risk to ensure reliable, continuous telephone service.

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1915

Questioning the Status Quo

Guy Carpenter, an insurance analyst, recognized that the American cotton industry’s reinsurance underwriters were overestimating risk by analyzing individual years rather than multi-year spans. To solve for this, he created the “Carpenter Plan,” which considered losses over a number of years, and convinced underwriters to offer lower rates. He founded a small firm in New York to apply his eponymous plan to other industries.

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1940

In War and Peace

As the world became engulfed in WWII, the US government sought insurance for war damages and risk. Because commissions were low, many brokers would not take on the business. In 1941, Don McLennan met with President Roosevelt in the Oval Office and decided that we would participate to help the country. During the course of the war, we placed a third of all of the war risk insurance. The effort continued into peacetime, when we led the way in arranging a consortium of brokers to handle marine insurance under the Marshall Plan, which delivered much needed equipment and commodities to a devastated Europe.

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1944

A Bespoke Approach

In 1944, William M. Mercer was asked to design a pension plan for his employer, Powell River Company, near Vancouver, Canada. He approached this assignment from a new perspective, creating a benefits scheme from scratch tailored to meet the needs of the company and his colleagues. Mercer revolutionized the industry and started his own consultancy which grew to become a premier provider of actuarial and benefits consulting services. We acquired his firm in 1959.

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1947

Facilitating Growth

In 1947, the Ford Motor Company centralized its operations at its giant River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan. This greatly increased the automaker’s risk of business interruption if anything went wrong. Our firm won the business by going above and beyond, offering to immediately start an in-depth loss prevention analysis to generate more favorable terms for the automaker.

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1949

Mobilizing Help

In the late 1940s, a Marsh analyst named Ray Dundon learned of the difficulties that hearing impaired people had in securing car insurance. Moved to help, he created an organization of hearing impaired drivers that could purchase coverage collectively. The pooling mechanism was effective and the organization grew quickly enabling insurance for thousands of hearing impaired drivers.

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1956

Protecting Peace

When the UN created the UN Emergency Force Peacekeepers in 1956 and planned to send them to the Egyptian-Israeli border during the Suez Canal crisis, the Secretary General, called Marsh to place coverage for both the planes and the Peacekeepers. Marsh did just that in 24 hours, and the mission garnered Lester Bowles Pearson, the Canadian statesman who organized the force, a Nobel Peace Prize for his effort.

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1963

An Award-Winning Claim

In 1957 we acquired Cosgrove, which provided an entry point to broker insurance for such iconic film productions as Cleopatra. After an accident destroyed the film’s original reels, requiring select scenes with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to reshoot, we helped save the production by successfully negotiating the insurance claims. Cleopatra went on to be the highest-grossing film of the year and a winner of several Academy Awards in 1963.

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1975

Launching the Space Business

In the early 1970s, we worked with Comsat, a company responsible for launching America’s television broadcast satellites, to broker insurance for everything from the satellites’ construction to launch and then maintenance in orbit. By working with multiple underwriters, especially in Lloyd’s of London, Marsh managed to secure coverage for this novel yet still risky business. We helped to pave the way for the industry—and used the experience to broker coverage on other satellites and rockets sent into space.

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1978

Leading Responsibly

In 1978, we tapped Adele Smith Simmons, university president and environmental leader, to join our board. Her family’s legacy with the company and her early advocacy for environmental causes and equality gave her a unique perspective. In 2008, she was appointed the first chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee of our Board, which served as a foundation for today’s ESG initiatives.

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1980

Ever Expanding

Starting in 1980, we rapidly expanded our international footprint through the acquisition of CT Bowring in the UK and Australia. We continued to grow our global footprint in the 1990s with the acquisitions of Johnson & Higgins in 1997 and Sedgwick in 1998, cementing our presence in Australia, Japan, Singapore, and the UK among other countries.

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1984

Clarity on the Future

In 1984, Alex Oliver and Bill Wyman recognized that deregulation and privatization meant that CEOs would need deeper industry expertise and specialization from their consultants. The two set up a new company, Oliver Wyman, to provide businesses with clearer paths to growth. Oliver Wyman joined our firm in 2003.

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1990

The First after the Fall

A year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we completed our merger with Gradmann & Holler, Germany’s leading insurance broker. With 400 new colleagues in the region following the acquisition, Marsh was the first insurance broker to open an office in East Germany, strengthening our ability to serve clients and bolstering economic confidence in the reunified nation.

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1992

Shoring Up the Insurance Industry

Hurricane Andrew, one of the most destructive storms of the past century, resulted in nearly $18 billion in losses for the insurance industry. As a result, reinsurance markets shrunk and insurance companies became bankrupt overnight. We knew something had to be done to rejuvenate the industry. Through Marsh and Guy Carpenter, we worked with the banking industry to create Mid Ocean Reinsurance, a completely independent company, which helped steer more capital to the reinsurance sector during this critical time. Mid Ocean Re was one of several Bermuda-based companies established to help surviving insurance companies spread their risk in case of large losses. This was the second time we helped form a new company to back the industry during a challenging time. In the mid-1980s, we led the way in creating ACE and XL, two Bermuda-chartered underwriters, that offered excess liability coverage during that era’s liability crisis.

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1995

Fusing Science with Talent Management

HR departments have long had access to data on their workforces, but until the mid 1990s, this rich resource largely went unused. That’s when Mercer began to apply data analytics and modeling to refine employers’ approach to hiring, promotion and compensation. This revolution allowed people to become a differentiating asset in the marketplace.

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2001

The 9/11 Tragedy

September 11, 2001 was the darkest day in our company’s history. We occupied most of floors 93 to 100 of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. There were 295 colleagues and 63 consultants in the office that morning, and tragically all were lost in the terrorist attack. Through the heroic efforts of Guy Carpenter’s then CEO of the Americas, Britt Newhouse, our employees in the South Tower that morning managed to evacuate. Following the attack, we provided immediate support to colleagues and the families of the victims.

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Visit our Memorial Site

2004

Trailblazing Responsible Investing

In 2004, Mercer established an industry-leading responsible investing arm, offering forward-looking advice on incorporating environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) considerations into investment decision-making and ownership practices. As a pioneer in the field, Mercer was called upon by the United Nations to help develop the Principles for Responsible Investment in 2006. Among asset consultants, Mercer is still the largest dedicated Responsible Investment consultant in the world.

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2006

Pioneering Public-Private Partnerships

Since the early 1980s, there has been a three-fold increase in the number of natural catastrophes. Through the development of catastrophe bonds and other reinsurance strategies, Guy Carpenter helps governments prepare for these risks and, in the event of a disaster, helps citizens rebuild and get back on their feet. In 2006, Guy Carpenter assisted Mexico’s FONDEN, its natural disasters fund, in placing a catastrophe bond, which helped the government recover nearly half a billion dollars to rebuild and provide low-income housing to citizens after a natural disaster. In early 2017, with Guy Carpenter’s help, FEMA became the first U.S. federal agency to purchase private reinsurance. Months after this landmark policy was placed, Hurricane Harvey struck Houston and a full payout of a billion dollars was triggered within weeks of the hurricane coming ashore. It provided immediate funding to pay claims to flood-insured survivors.

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#ShapingIndustries

2007

A Smaller Carbon Footprint

Since 2007, we have adhered to the principles of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), voluntarily measuring and disclosing our greenhouse gas emissions and sustainability strategy. We made meaningful strides in the 2000s, reducing our Scope 2 emissions 20% from 2012 to 2015. This work continues today through our most recent commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 15% below 2019 levels by of 2025.

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#Innovation

2010

Furthering Diversity in Insurance

In 2010, we partnered with Heidrick & Struggles to convene the first Insurance Diversity Roundtable. More than 60 senior business and diversity leaders from Marsh, Guy Carpenter and leading US insurance companies and brokerage firms gathered for two days of discussion and education, and began identifying the particular challenges the industry faces in attracting and retaining diverse talent.

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2010

A Partner in Our Communities

We launched a social impact team to organize our volunteer efforts globally in 2010. Today, colleagues receive one paid day off each year to volunteer. Fifty thousand colleagues have collectively volunteered nearly one million hours over the past five years. The program has engaged colleagues across the world from working with the British Red Cross to assist refugees in the UK to volunteering during Nelson Mandela Day in South Africa.

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2012

Helping Avert Financial Disaster

Still suffering from the shocks of the 2008 financial crisis, the European Central Bank and several European countries, including Spain and Greece, faced additional debt crises beginning in 2011. The European Central Bank turned to Oliver Wyman to perform a series of stress tests, which were instrumental in securing further capital injections into the European financial system and ultimately helped to prevent a second financial meltdown.

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2017

Planning for a Pandemic

We have always been focused on the issues of the future. In 2017, GC Securities, a group within Guy Carpenter that provides alternative capital solutions, partnered with the World Bank to launch the first-ever catastrophe bonds and catastrophe-linked swaps to combat infectious disease. As pandemics are one of the least insured risks, the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) housed at the World Bank was designed to provide surge funding to developing countries facing possible pandemic outbreaks. In 2020, the PEF was triggered and nearly $200 million has been paid out to 64 low-income countries with reported cases of COVID-19 including Haiti, Sri Lanka and Mongolia. In 2018, to meet the growing risks surrounding outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics, Marsh collaborated with Munich Re and Metabiota to create PathogenRX, an innovative parametric solution to protect US-based businesses and their global operations affected by an infectious disease outbreak. The solution was ahead of its time, providing business interruption coverage to businesses impacted by infectious diseases.

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#ShapingIndustries

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2020

Supporting Colleagues During COVID-19

Caring for our colleagues is a central tenet of our culture. In April 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact every corner of the world, we established a $5 million fund to support our colleagues experiencing personal financial hardship stemming from the pandemic. At the end of 2020, the fund helped more than 2,000 colleagues in 45 countries.

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2020

Modeling The Crisis

During the height of the pandemic, Oliver Wyman marshalled its analytic talent and public health experts to create a suite of models to support clients’ pandemic-related risk decisions and analysis. Since its launch, the CDC-referenced Oliver Wyman Pandemic Navigator has been used by governments to decide when to open and close schools and by hospitals to inform capacity needs and therapeutic demand.

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As we celebrate our history and chart our future together, Marsh McLennan colleagues share their views on the next 150 years, below.

Join the conversation on social media with #MM150.

Our Shared Future

Bhawna Virmani

Senior IT Project Analyst

Roger Schlimbach

FLDP Associate

Briana Basile

Innovation Deployment Specialist

Zuriel C. Naiker

Managing Director, Sales & Distribution Africa

Zulma Suarez

CEO Carpenter Marsh Fac Colombia

We Remember and Honor

On September 11, 2001, we lost 295 colleagues and 63 consultants working in our offices in the World Trade Center. They were cherished colleagues and friends, and their memory will live forever in our hearts.

Visit our Memorial Site

Creating Possibilities for 150 Years

As we celebrate our history and chart our future together, Marsh McLennan colleagues share their views on the next 150 years, below.

Join the conversation on social media with #MM150.