Deals & People November 12, 2021

Retirement Industry People Moves

Integrated Pension Services names new sales-focused managing director; WIPN announces 2022 board composition; Relational Gravity hires principal consultant; and more.

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Art by Subin Yang

Art by Subin Yang

Integrated Pension Services Names New Managing Director

Integrated Partners’ retirement planning and pension services arm, Integrated Pension Services, has hired Jason Grantz as institutional retirement sales and marketing managing director. 

In this role, Grantz is responsible for educating financial advisers and their clients about topics relating to retirement plans and third-party administrator (TPA) services. Grantz’s hiring comes after Integrated Pension Services recently acquired Benefits 21.  

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Passionate about clarifying misconceptions about retirement planning, Grantz is the co-creator and primary author of The 401(k) Plan Blog. He has also been published in several industry journals, including the Journal of Pension Benefits, the Journal of Compensation and Benefits, and the ASPPA Journal.  

Grantz is focused on working to expand retirement security nationally and helping defeat elder poverty by creating well-designed plans. 

“Retirement coverage is among the biggest societal problems we have in this country,” Grantz says. “Less than two-thirds of working Americans have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, and of the group with access, only 20% to 40% are on track to successfully retire and replace their paycheck in a way that is sustainable for the rest of their life. That is why we are facing elder poverty issues in this country.” 

Grantz was previously the director of institutional retirement consulting at Unified Trust Co., where he worked for more than a dozen years. Before that, he was assistant vice president of retirement plans at AllianceBernstein.  

WIPN Announces 2022 Board Members

WE Inspire Promote Network (WIPN) has announced its 2022 board members. Lisa Smith, senior vice president and head of national accounts at Fidelity Investments Workplace Investing, is the incoming president, assuming the role from past president, Jennifer Norr, vice president at CUNA Mutual Group.

“Over the past year under Jennifer’s leadership, WIPN rose to the challenge of expanding our support and resources to meet the unique needs of women in our industry and met a tremendous growth milestone of over 1,500 members. I’m excited to take over a thriving organization at a societal inflection point regarding the advancement of diversity, equality and inclusion [DE&I] initiatives for women in the retirement industry,” Smith says. “WIPN’s proprietary research findings, which focused on the value of networking and mentoring, the significance of a clear career path and culture of inclusion, and clarity around compensation and work-life balance, will be expanded upon in 2022 to give us a platform to further the conversation of positive, accelerated progress for women in the retirement industry.”

Additional board members for 2022 include:

  • Vice president: Jennifer Mulrooney, American Century Investments vice president and regional retirement consultant
  • Treasurer: Lauren Hill, national accounts at John Hancock Retirement
  • Board secretary: Lisa Allen, Advisor2X chief revenue officer
  • National events: Sheri Fitts, Sheri Fitts & Co. CEO
  • Programming and research: Theresa Conti, Sunwest Pensions president
  • Membership: Tina Schackman, BFSG LLC principal
  • Diversity, equity and inclusion: Rosalyn Brown, PNC senior business development officer
  • Mentorship: Jean Martone, T. Rowe Price executive relationship manager
  • Strategic Marketing: Christina Tunison, financial adviser at LPL Financial
  • Sponsorship: Mindy O’Connor, Ascensus head of business development
  • Eastern regional chapters: Pam Brooks, Oswald Financial Inc. senior client manager
  • Western regional chapters: Ivana Polonijo, Fiduciary Decisions chief client officer

Relational Gravity Hires Principal Consultant

Jeff Hutson has returned to Relational Gravity as a principal consultant after 15 years as chief communication officer at the Indiana Public Retirement System (INPRS). At the retirement system, he led communication, retirement financial education and voice-of-the-customer research. He will provide similar services for clients of Relational Gravity.

Hutson is a Certified Retirement Counselor (CRC) with more than 30 years of research, communication, public relations and marketing experience. He is an Accredited Business Communicator and holds an Insights Professional Certification in market research. A graduate of Butler University and Ball State University, he holds a certificate in market research from the University of Georgia.

Aviva Investors Adds to Global High-Yield Team

Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva, announced it has strengthened its global high-yield team with the appointment of Sau Mui as a fund manager.

Mui has joined as a fund manager on the global high-yield, short-duration global high-yield, and U.S. high-yield strategies. Based in Chicago, Mui reports to Brent Finck and Sunita Kara, global co-heads of high-yield funds at Aviva Investors.

Prior to joining Aviva Investors, Mui was a portfolio manager for PPM America in Chicago, where she managed the firm’s core-plus and credit-plus strategies. Before assuming that role in 2019, Mui was a senior credit research analyst with the same firm, responsible for researching global investment grade and high-yield corporates in the financials sector.

Her prior experience includes positions as a credit research analyst with Harris Associates and as a high-yield research associate with Putnam Investments.

Deals & People November 12, 2021

Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk on Lockton Partnership

The affinity relationship is about adding scale, Mallouk tells PLANADVISER, but equally important is the battle to secure top advisory talent for the next phase of the firms’ collective growth.

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News broke early Thursday that Lockton and Creative Planning are combining forces, with the goal of creating a “best-in-class advisory offering designed to serve corporate retirement plans and the plans’ participants.”

The partnership itself will be named “Lockton Retirement Services, an Offering of Creative Planning.” Moving forward, Lockton will take an equity position in Creative Planning, meant to underscore the firms’ “mutual commitment” to “forge an aligned, tangible and differentiated partnership.”

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Peter Mallouk, president and CEO of Creative Planning, took time on the morning of the announcement to explain his firm’s vision to PLANADVISER, noting that Lockton and Creative Planning will technically remain independent of one another as they pursue a shared vision for a collaborative future.

“The affinity relationship means we are going to be able to work together such that any respective weaknesses are now our strengths,” Mallouk says. “Lockton is still Lockton and Creative Planning is still Creative Planning. In practice, we will be referring our clients to Lockton in areas where it is stronger than us, and the same is true of Lockton. Together, we can work with our respective clients to create a holistic and very powerful service offering.”

Explaining this vision further, Mallouk says his firm has been performing well “with the average private wealth client, and with many smaller and larger private wealth clients.” On the 401(k) plan side, he says, the firm has a skilled group that traditionally works with small and midsized plans.

“Frankly, serving plan clients that are way up market has not been a major strength of ours, but for Lockton, that’s right down the middle,” Mallouk says. “Our joining forces represents the fact that, in today’s competitive advisory landscape, you have to be able to compete at all levels. If you look at the well-run national firms that we are increasingly competing with, this partnership between Lockton and Creative Planning allows us to match and meet their capabilities. The link with Lockton’s highly scaled insurance and brokerage capabilities is also important.”

Though he did not mention them by name, the firms Mallouk is referring to include the likes of CAPTRUST, Hub International, SageView and OneDigital, all of which have engaged in meaningful merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. While they have some nuances in their individual approaches, these firms are building business models that can support advisers working with both private wealth management and institutional clients.

Leaders at these firms say that serving retirement plans and private individuals does not mean a firm will be aggressively soliciting rollovers or engaging in other potentially problematic cross-selling behaviors barred by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Instead, they say building a firm that does both private wealth and institutional retirement plan business—alongside insurance brokerage services and even health care-focused services—is about creating a holistic service ecosystem that clients want and need, especially as the defined contribution (DC) plan system matures and becomes a key component of individuals’ retirement income.

Mallouk says the battle for scale is an important factor leading to the rapid pace of M&A activity, but another key piece of the puzzle is the competition among firms for advisers and brokers. 

“Getting the right group of talented and experienced advisers together under one roof is extremely important for long-term success in this industry,” Mallouk says. “In reality, it’s a pretty small pool of practitioners who are experts in this field, so talent acquisition is every bit as important as scale, from our point of view.”

Reflecting on the role that private equity (PE) investments have played for his firm, Mallouk says the minority-stake backing General Atlantic took on earlier this year is very important for his firm’s future, but it was not necessarily a big factor in the move to partner with Lockton.

“General Atlantic’s investment in Creative Planning is a passive minority stake, meaning the PE firm has not provided additional assets to make acquisitions or sought to change our firm’s goals, strategy or approach,” he explains. “It is important to understand that this is a passive ownership stake it has taken on. So we have not utilized its capital to do acquisitions.”

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