Retirement Industry People Moves

Mercer Advisors makes three acquisitions; retirement and wealth management firm kPlans joins SageView Advisory Group; Prudential hires a global head of digital products; and more.

Art by Subin Yang

Mercer Advisors Acquires 3 Wealth Management Firms

Mercer Global Advisors Inc. has acquired Berkson Asset Management Inc., and Steven M. Berkson, CPA, a Professional Corporation. Berkson is a wealth management firm headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, and provides tax, accounting and other financial services. The company serves approximately 100 clients with assets under management of approximately $185 million. Berkson was founded in 1995 by Steven Berkson.

Mercer also acquired Fure Financial Corp. Fure Financial is a wealth management firm headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota, serving approximately 300 clients with assets under management of approximately $260 million. Fure Financial was founded in 1985 by Johannes C. Fure, president, senior wealth adviser and chief investment officer.

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Fure Financial is an independent registered investment adviser

The third acquisition is Bivin and Associates Inc. Bivin is a wealth management firm headquartered in Ponca City Oklahoma, with assets under management of approximately $130 million. Bivin was founded in 1994 by William Stan Bivin, the firm’s president.

The entire team of each acquired firm will join Mercer Advisors.

SageView Advisory Group Acquires Retirement and Wealth Management Firm kPlans

SageView Advisory Group has acquired kPlans Investment Services Inc. of Valencia, California. kPlans, which has $825 million in assets under advisement, offers retirement plan consulting with a focus on defined benefit and cash balance plans, as well as a growing wealth practice. kPlans is the fifth firm to join SageView since July 2021. Steve Sansone, who founded kPlans in 2005, will become a managing director at SageView.

Wise Rhino Group served kPlans as adviser on the transaction. 

Prudential Hires Global Head of Digital Products

Utkarsh Patel will join Prudential Financial Inc. as global head of digital products. Patel will be responsible for transforming customer, client and adviser digital experiences to drive critical business outcomes.

Patel brings expertise in digital transformation across asset management, banking, health care and wealth management, having managed business transformations for B2B and B2C companies such as First Abu Dhabi Bank, BBVA, Humana, Citigroup and American Express. He joins the company from Wealth Enhancement Group, where he served as chief marketing and digital officer.

Patel will report to Prudential’s chief customer officer, Hema Widhani, and join her customer and digital senior leadership team.

Patel graduated from Drexel University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and finance.

Creative Planning Acquires Rosen Capital Management

Rosen Capital Management has joined Creative Planning LLC. Rosen Capital Management has $114 million in assets under management and brings two new employees into the Creative Planning fold, including the firm’s CEO, Glenn Rosen.

Rosen Capital Management is a third-generation family business that began in 1948 as a life and health insurance agency, ultimately transitioning into a full-fledged financial planning and money management firm. It specializes in complete financial planning to include tax minimization strategies, wealth management, insurance needs and estate planning. 

With this acquisition, the second in two weeks, Creative Planning manages or advises on over $225 billion in assets across all 50 states and 65 countries with, the company says, continued plans for growth throughout 2022.

Incap Group Inc. in Baltimore served as financial adviser to Rosen Capital Management on the transaction.

OneDigital Expands Wealth Management Capabilities

OneDigital Investment Advisors, an SEC-registered investment adviser and wholly owned subsidiary of OneDigital, announced it has acquired TimeScale Financial, a registered investment adviser in Danvers, Massachusetts. This acquisition marks OneDigital’s fifth transaction in a five-month period of strategically growing its wealth management offering.

TimeScale currently manages approximately $3 billion in assets across wealth management and retirement plan advising.

The company’s full 19-employee team will join OneDigital, led by James Horrocks as retirement and wealth senior vice president; Kate Asack as operations vice president; and Neil Tremblay as retirement vice president.

Following the completion of the TimeScale acquisition, OneDigital Investment Advisors will be responsible for advising approximately $106.7 billion in total assets under advisement, representing over 1 million participants and 41,000 individual accounts. Strategic partnerships have led to significant growth for the firm, fueling its investments in technology solutions and other resources that deliver efficiencies for broker partners and the customers they serve. 

DeVoe & Co. represented TimeScale Financial in the transaction.

Are Retirement Savings Tax Incentives Leaving the Middle Class Behind?

A new report details how today’s retirement savings structure and tax incentives fail to promote adequate retirement security for the middle class.

A new report by the National Institute on Retirement Security highlights the insufficiencies of current tax incentives in ensuring retirement security for the middle class. It includes marginal tax rates, retirement plan participation and income distribution on retirement savings levels as culpable factors.

The report, “The Missing Middle: How Tax Incentives for Retirement Savings Leave Middle Class Families Behind,” also offers potential solutions that could enhance retirement security for middle-class families.

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Saving for retirement is one of the biggest financial challenges most working Americans will face. While the vast majority will participate in Social Security, less than half will have their income replaced, the report says. Many workers will need to save for retirement through other vehicles.

Congress has passed a number of tax incentives to encourage saving for retirement, but due to the structure of the tax code, uneven levels of retirement plan participation and the growth of income inequality, many of the benefits of these tax incentives accrue to high-income earners, the report says.

“The middle class is left behind by the retirement savings system in key ways. Social Security replacement rates are too low for middle-class families to maintain their standard of living in retirement, but many middle-class households don’t reach the level of income and savings needed to truly benefit from the tax incentives for individual savings,” the report says. “This means the middle class too often is missing out in terms of benefiting from various retirement savings programs.”

More than half of the present value of tax benefits for defined contribution plans and individual retirement accounts accrues to those in the top 10% by income, according to the report, and a significant percentage of the present value of defined benefit pension plans also accrues to those in the top 10%. The top 30% of workers by income receive 89% of the present value of DC plans and IRAs, and 83% of the present value of DB plans.

The value of tax incentives for saving is greater for those at higher income levels, who face higher marginal tax rates, the report says. These incentives are weaker for much of the middle class. Additionally, those who are able to invest earlier and at higher levels enjoy a greater advantage from the deferral of taxation on investment gains.

The tax expenditures for retirement saving, focused on the defined contribution system, have led to inequities beyond income and wealth, the report says. Geographic and racial inequities related to retirement are exacerbated by the tax incentives for saving.

Solutions to these inequities should focus on increasing participation in the retirement savings system and ensuring working families also receive adequate incentives to save for retirement, the report says. Some potential solutions could focus on building upon Social Security, either through benefit changes or allowing the program to integrate lifetime income options for savers.

Reforming the tax expenditures themselves, by eliminating the deduction-based system and replacing it with a refundable credit, is another possibility. Other solutions could focus on increasing access and participation in savings plans, which some states are doing for workers who lack workplace plans, thereby making it easier to participate, the report says. Finally, curbing abuses of the existing system would ensure that the significant sums of federal tax revenue dedicated to retirement security are directed at generating retirement income.

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