Alex Bernhardt

Director, Marsh McLennan Advantage

Alex Bernhardt is a Director in the Marsh McLennan Advantage group.  He is responsible for developing innovative strategies across Marsh McLennan’s businesses to address some of the largest issues facing society in the 21st century.  Previously, Alex worked at two of the company’s businesses – Mercer and Guy Carpenter. 

Most recently Alex ran Mercer’s Responsible Investment team in North America. In this role he regularly led environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration exercises with the boards and investment committees of institutional investors of all types and sizes while driving innovation in environmental and social risk management. Alex was a lead contributor to Mercer’s Investing in a Time of Climate Change research in 2015 and 2019 and (co)-led related consulting arrangements with institutional investors across North America with over $800B of portfolio assets.

Prior to joining Mercer, Alex was a Senior Vice President at Guy Carpenter where he founded and ran the firm's GC Micro Risk Solutions® division focused on designing and developing index-based micro(re)insurance programs for development banks, microfinance institutions and insurers. Additionally, he supported the firm's broader growth efforts advising public and private risk-bearing entities on a variety of issues with a focus on disaster risk management, energy liability and credit risk. In this capacity Alex co-led the Flood Insurance Risk Study, an in-depth year-long project for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) focused on researching the global capacity for catastrophic flood reinsurance, options for flood insurance privatization in the US and the NFIP's capital adequacy.

Alex is an honors graduate of the University of Puget Sound (BA) and is often quoted in financial industry press. He maintains his Series 7 and 63 securities licenses and has achieved Associate of Reinsurance, Associate of Insurance Services and Associate of Risk Management for Public Entities accreditations from The Institutes.  He has also received recognition for his work across (re)insurance and investment markets: he was ranked as one of the top 20 most influential individual consultants globally in the Sustainable and Responsible Investing category by the Independent Research in Responsible Investment (IRRI) Survey 2017; he was designated a Rising Star by Reactions magazine in 2011 and; he was designated a Power Broker® by Risk & Insurance magazine also in 2011.