Our Company

At P-Solve, we’re passionate about our business, and using creativity and innovation to create real performance improvements for our clients globally. This section describes the background to the P-Solve business, what we do, and how we’ve developed.

P-Solve is part of the Punter Southall Group, and was founded in March 2001 to provide advice to liability-driven organisations such as trustee groups, corporations, charities and insurance companies.

We have been very successful, growing the original P-Solve Asset Solutions business in from a standing start to advising over 130 clients. These clients vary in size - from £2 million to £6 billion - and by type, covering defined benefit and defined contribution schemes, and charities.

However, P-Solve is now much more than the original Asset Solutions business. We have a range of underlying businesses, operating in investment, risk management, derivatives, technology, investor relations and communication, and legal sectors.

The theme that links all these businesses is performance – at P-Solve we are dedicated to helping our clients around the world achieve real improvements in performance, whether this is investment, better risk management, greater insight through analysis, or share price performance through investor relations. P-Solve is about achieving better performance, wherever we operate.

We believe our success is down to a number of key factors, which we describe below.

Great people…	We have focused since the beginning of the business on building the strongest team we possibly could. We now have world-class team of people delivering a wide variety of performance improving solutions to clients around the world.
Innovate…	Any business that seeks to adapt to the changing dynamics of business and investment must move ahead of the times. We innovate aggressively to help position our clients to take advantage of conditions as they change.
Specialise well…	We believe the time when a single individual can know all that needs to be known to make decisions, whether on investment or communication, is long dead. We have, since we started, focused on bringing into our business highly effective specialists in a range of areas, rather than training consultants into a new area. For example, in derivatives-related activities we have professionals with significant real trading expertise to provide this support.
Know the actual client need…	We spend time helping clients develop their actual need. This isn’t always as simple as it might seem, but is critical to ensure we’re solving the right problem.
Focus on what matters…	The market for investment products and services is very wide. The issues to be considered in governing a pension scheme, for example, are very wide ranging. The reality is that it is probably inappropriate to try and do everything at once. Which means we need to focus on what currently really matters. Integral to our approach is this focus – we advise our clients on the small number of issues we think they should worry about, right now. This makes it more likely they’ll get done in time to create improvements in performance.
Say it as it is…	Markets move quickly, and so must we. This means that we generally need to advise our clients directly about what we think they should do. Which in turn requires talking plainly. In general, this approach has meant clients have been able to make decisions more quickly, resulting in more added value.
…fair fees for added value.	We believe in long term relationships with our clients, as this is necessary for us really to create sustainable added value. As a result, we try hard to behave fairly in relation to fees. If we are doing something administrative, for example, that our clients don’t value, we’d rather not do it, or charge less. On the other hand, we do seek to be paid appropriately for the value we generate in investment terms, which has led to us engaging with many clients on a performance-related basis.

It is important to recognise that this approach does not work for everyone. But where clients are seeking a real performance improvement, we are likely to be the partner for you.