Pension Resource Institute Names Annie Messer President

Annie Messer

The Pension Resource Institute LLC, an ERISA compliance and practice management firm, announced Tuesday the appointment of Annie Messer as its new president.

Messer joined PRI in 2023 after 14 years leading retirement and fiduciary initiatives at Cambridge Investment Research. She most recently served as PRI’s president of member relations.

“PRI’s role has always been to help member firms build retirement plan businesses on a strong compliance and practice management foundation,” Messer said in a statement. “As more wealth management firms look to retirement plans as a source of organic growth, my focus is helping our members turn that opportunity into a compliant, scalable business.”

PRI also announced that Haley Erickson was appointed chief compliance officer of Group Plan Systems, a PRI-affiliated firm and independent pooled employer plan fiduciary. In her newly created role, Erickson will lead GPS efforts to improve client experience on its PEP platform.

Erickson has 15 years of third-party-administrator experience, including retirement plan administration, compliance testing and reporting. She joined GPS two years ago after several management and consulting roles and earned a bachelor of science degree in economics from Duquesne University.

To support Erickson, GPS recently added Justina Feliz as a fiduciary consultant to take on some of Erickson’s prior day-to-day compliance responsibilities and lead the GPS onboarding process for new PEPs.

“Haley’s and Annie’s appointments are the culmination of a two-year plan to create an integrated model of legal and operational fiduciary expertise across our ecosystem,” said Jason Roberts, PRI’s founder and CEO and the managing partner in GPS, in a statement. “Haley understands the operational detail behind a well-run retirement plan and has earned this role through her technical command and client focus. Annie has led our member firm relationships through an important period of growth, and her promotion strengthens PRI’s ability to support firms building and scaling retirement plan businesses.”

Steve Niehoff, who previously served as chief operating officer across GPS and related PRI businesses, will step back from daily operation, effective August 1. He will continue to support PRI and its affiliated entities as an independent contractor. GPS and PRI employees who previously reported to Niehoff will report to Erickson and Messer, respectively.

Founded in 2010, PRI supports more than 70 member firms and roughly 50,000 financial professionals, including broker/dealers, registered investment advisers and independent retirement plan advisers.