Deals & People April 4, 2023

Pensionmark Appoints New M&A Head to Push Growth

Former Envestnet M&A lead joins Pensionmark about one year after the firm was acquired by World Insurance with goal of adding advisers.

Reported by


Pensionmark, owned by World Insurance Associates LLC, announced Tuesday that Neel Ray will be leading mergers and acquisitions for the firm.

Ray is leaving a similar role at financial technology firm Envestnet after about two years in the role. He takes the role of senior vice president of business development at Pensionmark Financial Group LLC, which has a national network of retirement and financial planning registered investment advisers, to grow and develop the firm’s M&A initiatives for financial services companies.

The firm makes the hire as retirement and wealth management firms continue to acquire RIAs in a consolidating space. World Insurance acquired Pensionmark in March 2022, with Pensionmark’s CEO and founder, Troy Hammond, telling PLANADVISER at the time the new owner would help the firm grow “collectively, faster and better.” The firm has acquired three firms since last May, including both retirement and wealth advisors, according to a spokesperson.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

“Having Neel join the World team helps us to capitalize on the incredible opportunity in front of us,” Hammond said in a statement Tuesday. “Neel will be stepping into a robust existing pipeline and has the expertise to bring current transactions to fruition, expand our sourcing and enhance our strategy and processes.”

Prior to his role at Envestnet, Ray had held executive positions at TD Ameritrade, TIAA and Bank of America’s Merrill division.

“Taking the foundational platform that Pensionmark/World provides to their advisors and coupling that with the flexible deal structures we have available to us creates a unique differentiator in the marketplace,” Ray said in a statement.

Pensionmark is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, and has a network of more than 345 advisers. World Insurance is based in Iselin, New Jersey, and has made more than 190 acquisitions since it was founded in 2011.

Data & Research April 4, 2023

Adviser Satisfaction Dips Amid Big Market Drop

In 2022, investor satisfaction with full-service investment advisers fell 17 points on a 1,000-point scale. 

Reported by

Investor satisfaction with full-service investment advisers fell by 1.7 percentage points in 2022 from 2021, according to the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Full-Service Investor Satisfaction Study.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

In 2022, the S&P 500 finished down nearly 20%, the worst year for Wall Street since 2008. The correlation between market performance and investor satisfaction poses a real challenge to the wealth management industry, said Tom Rieman, head of wealth solutions at J.D. Power.

“Adviser satisfaction continues to track overall market performance, and this points to a systemic problem in our industry: adviser value propositions grounded in investment performance,” said Rieman in a statement. “Advisers cannot control the ebbs and flows of the market, but the good ones help their clients plan for their best futures and deliver value in the form of comprehensive advice that should shine through in all market conditions.”

Overall investor satisfaction with full-service investment advisers in 2022 was 727 on a 1,000-point scale, down 17 points (2.3% of the previous total) from the year before. The figure was at 850 in 2020 and 776 in 2008. Adviser satisfaction tracking market performance indicates few advisers are delivering on their core value proposition, according to J.D. Power experts.

Currently only 11% of advisers offer comprehensive advice, namely personalized guidance on all financial and wealth management needs. In contrast, 42% of advisers deliver transactional advice, and 47% offer goals-based advice.

Among the 57% of full-service wealth management clients who reported having a financial plan, only 56% said they received comprehensive advice. Furthermore, only 32% of people expressed that their adviser made recommendations in their best interest. Twenty-nine percent of respondents did not feel that their adviser understood their financial goals.

Millennials and those in Generation Z were most likely to switch firms in the next 12 months and were most likely to work with a secondary investment firm, according to the study. Of these younger investors, 27% stated they “definitely will” or “probably will” switch firms, while 49% said they are working with a secondary investment firm.

J.D. Power found that in overall investor satisfaction, Charles Schwab ranked highest with a score of 752, followed by UBS at 741 and Fidelity with 740.

Conducted from October 2022 through January 2023, the study drew responses from 6,168 investors who work directly with a dedicated financial adviser or team of advisers.

«