The US-headquartered firm is adding to its list of acquisitions in Asia, having bought a Japanese business earlier this year.

Global consulting firm Mercer has acquired investment advisory firm India Life Capital, Livemint.com has reported, citing a senior executive.

Anish Sarkar, chief executive officer at Mercer India, was quoted as saying that the acquisition will help the firm expand services under its wealth portfolio. He did not disclose financial details of the transaction.

WealthBriefingAsia has contacted Mercer for comment and may update in due course.

“In India, we have a fairly large presence in the careers space. We also do some work on health and wealth space, primarily on actuarial valuations, some amount of retirement consulting and recently, a little bit of play in health and wellness. From a Mercer standpoint, we have a much larger portfolio globally and we are really keen to make sure that we are able to continually expand what we are doing with our clients in India and keep getting into more and more world-class offerings and solutions that Mercer is offering to its global clients,” Sarkar was quoted as saying.

“Wealth is a line of business that we have been keen to grow in India and this acquisition of India Life Capital is a strategic acquisition for us to get into this space,” he said.

“India Life is one of the largest Sebi-registered investment advisors, at the moment focused largely on advising retirement funds but also expanding into other asset classes. So, for us, it marks an expansion of our wealth business into the investment advisory space,” Sarkar added.

In January this year, Mercer, which is part of US-headquartered Marsh & McLenan,  has acquired BFC Asset Management Co, the Japanese alternative investment management house, for an undisclosed sum.

As also reported in January, Steven Seow, the head of Mercer’s head of wealth in Asia, left the consultancy firm to create his own business that converts bankers into management consultants. Seow is executive director of Singapore Consultancy. At Mercer, he was head of wealth management Asia from October 2013 to December last year. He is also a judge for this publication’s annual awards (see results from last week’s event in Singapore).