It's a long way from a single bank building in Lake Forest, Illinois, to our status today: the world's largest provider of multi-service human resource outsourcing. But the path we've followed since 1940, when Ted Hewitt founded his insurance brokerage firm, has proven wise for us and for our clients: understand what makes successful companies and provide products and services to help them and their people succeed.

By the 1950s, our agility at providing sound ideas and workable solutions had already established us as a provider of actuarial and related employee benefits and compensation services for major employers. And as we grew, so did our need for new offices. We opened the first Hewitt regional office in Minneapolis in 1959, then several others from coast to coast.

We branched into Toronto, Canada in 1974 and went overseas in 1985, opening offices in Paris and in St. Albans, outside London. Dozens of new offices followed.

Today, we have clients, including the world's most successful companies—more than half the FORTUNE 500® and more than a third of the FORTUNE Global 500®. Our reach is truly global, with employees in countries.

We'll handle more than 54 million HR-related customer interactions from more than 18 million employees and retirees this year. And our addition of HR BPO pioneer Exult in 2004 cements our standing as the only firm capable of integrating HR outsourcing and HR consulting to deliver solutions that help companies maximize their HR investment.

For more information, please visit our Hewitt History Timeline.