Deals & People June 2, 2021

Epstein Financial Group Latest to Join Hub International

The rapid pace of retirement plan adviser acquisitions continues, with more and more well-established firms joining up with large national aggregators.

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Hub International has announced its latest acquisition of a retirement plan advisory firm in Epstein Financial, located in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

Technically, Hub has acquired the assets of both Epstein Financial Services LLC and Epstein Financial Group LLC, which collectively do business as Epstein Financial.

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Similar to the many firms that Hub has acquired over the last several years, Epstein’s focus is on corporate retirement plan consulting, compliance and regulatory guidance, and wealth management services. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but Charlie Epstein, principal and founder of Epstein Financial, will join Hub Retirement and Private Wealth within Hub New England.

Epstein Financial was represented by the consulting firm Wise Rhino Group for the transaction.

News of the deal comes after the first quarter of 2021 broke yet another quarterly record for adviser industry merger and acquisition (M&A) deal volume. Sources say all signs suggest 2021 is already on pace to be the ninth consecutive year of record-setting activity.

Various motivations and intersecting trends are fueling the M&A rush. In this case, linking health care and wealth management; maximizing practice scale and cross-selling opportunities; addressing individuals’ insurance and financial wellness needs—Hub’s new retirement plan specialist advisers hope to do all of this and more.

Products June 2, 2021

Vestwell and Bambu Team Up on Participant Advice

The partnership offers adviser managed accounts, an application programming interface (API) to provide personalized participant advice and a library of APIs to create a robo-advisory platform.

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Vestwell, a digital recordkeeping platform, and Bambu, a global robo-advisory technology provider, are teaming up to help Vestwell and its provider partners personalize investment strategies for their clients based on actionable retirement goals.

The new relationship played a role in Vestwell’s recently released adviser managed account offering with Franklin Templeton. Together, they are rolling out an offering using the latter’s Goals Optimization Engine.

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“As workplace investor expectations evolve, it’s vital to deliver [to] participants the types of personalized solutions they’ve become accustomed to in all other aspects of their lives,” says Ben Thomason, executive vice president of revenue at Vestwell. “Working with Bambu and Franklin Templeton has made it possible to create a seamlessly data-integrated, low-friction, bespoke managed account experience at a reasonable price.”

In addition, Bambu has developed a wealthtech application programming interface (API) to supply investors with information useful in retirement saving. The retirement API has features targeting U.S. retirees’ needs, which considers Social Security benefits investors will receive, tax status and retirement goals. The investing platform starts with the user’s current status in terms of savings amount and lifestyle. Then, the proprietary engine presents the person with an overview of various options, including investment strategies that may be appropriate based on his answers to a targeted risk tolerance questionnaire.

“With the rapidly changing landscape of retirement planning in America, it is important for financial institutions to provide a seamless experience that helps individuals save and plan their future,” says Ned Phillips, Bambu founder and CEO. “Being able to offer API as an option along with the enterprise and white label solutions has been beneficial. It allows clients, who already have technical resources at their disposal, to build a wealth management platform more quickly by using our APIs for end points such as retirement goal calculators and portfolio projections.”

Bambu has a library of more than 70 wealthtech APIs designed to make wealth management easy for companies wishing to create a robo-advisory platform. These can be categorized by financial planning; country and fund data; machine learning; transactions allocations; and performance monitoring. No set up is required.

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