Deals & People November 10, 2023

Retirement Industry People Moves – 11/10/23

CAPTRUST adds Leddy as chief compliance officer; Voya hires Harrell as regional vice president; MissionSquare names Whiting SVP, chief sales officer; and more.

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CAPTRUST Adds Leddy as Chief Compliance Officer

Ann Leddy

Ann Leddy joined CAPTRUST in September and serves as chief compliance officer, based in New York.

She leads the firm’s compliance department, which is responsible for the firm’s regulatory compliance program, including the design and implementation of policies, procedures and controls to comply with applicable regulatory requirements; monitoring and testing for adherence to those controls; and furthering the firm’s culture of compliance.

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CAPTRUST’s former chief compliance officer Denise Buchanan remains at the firm as the senior director of compliance. She will work closely with Leddy during the transition.

Leddy has broad experience across the financial services industry as a compliance leader and regulatory counsel. Most recently, she led retail client experience compliance at Vanguard and, before that, was global head of policies and procedures and compliance training at BlackRock.

Voya Hires Harrell to Support the West Division Wealth Solutions Sales Team

Cameron Harrell

Voya Financial has hired Cameron Harrell as a regional vice president for the company’s wealth solutions sales team, covering emerging markets in San Diego and Hawaii.

In his role, Harrell is responsible for all sales supporting 401(k), 403(b), health savings account and non-qualified deferred compensation plans to intermediaries within the San Diego and Hawaii regions.

Most recently, Harrell served as a regional sales manager at Empower, where he was responsible for 401(k) sales with wirehouse partners in San Diego and Orange County, California. Prior to that, he held various roles at Empower supporting business development and internal sales.

“We are excited to welcome Cameron to our team here at Voya,” Bill Elmslie, Voya’s senior vice president and emerging market sales leader, said in a statement. “His expertise and proven strong relationships in the industry will make for a seamless transition to our team, and I look forward to seeing his continued success here at Voya within San Diego and Hawaii—and beyond.”

MissionSquare Retirement Names Whiting Senior VP, Chief Sales Officer

Andrew Whiting

MissionSquare Retirement, a nonstock, nonprofit, financial services company, has appointed Andrew Whiting as senior vice president and chief sales officer. Whiting, who has served in an acting capacity since April, joined MissionSquare Retirement in 2020 as the head of institutional sales.

“Andrew brings an exceptional combination of experience, determination, and integrity to lead MissionSquare Retirement’s sales and business development program,” Deanna Santana, CEO and president of MissionSquare Retirement, said in a statement. “For the past six months, Andrew has fostered robust relationships with customers and has astutely guided our sales team, surpassing our expectations.”

Whiting is responsible for a broad range of retirement savings, financial planning, investment-only and advisory programs (including government, education, health care and not-for-profit retirement plans). Additionally, he has overall responsibility for all revenue and client-facing sales teams across the organization.

Whiting has more than 16 years of experience in the financial services industry. He has an extensive background working with government sector retirement plans, including 457 and 403(b) retirement plans.

Securian Financial Names Ferguson Senior VP

Kristin Ferguson

Securian Financial Group Inc. named Kristin Ferguson senior vice president in charge of individual solutions, which include the company’s individual life insurance and individual annuities business lines.

Ferguson reports to Chris Hilger, Securian Financial’s chairman, president and CEO. She succeeds longtime Securian Financial executive George Connolly, who is now serving as an executive adviser and chief strategy officer, also reporting to Hilger.

“I am excited about Kristin Ferguson’s new role leading Individual Solutions, one of our four priority solutions groups and key to our ability to serve the protection and retirement needs of individuals and families,” Hilger said in a statement.

Ferguson first worked for Securian Financial as a college intern in 2001. She joined the company full-time in 2002 and has since held various leadership roles. Most recently, Ferguson served as vice president, chief financial officer and actuary in the individual solutions group. She previously held various financial management and actuarial roles and was promoted to second vice president in 2019 and vice president in 2022.

Retirement Advisor Council Elects Board Members Famiglietta, Glynn

Kelly Famiglietta

The members of the Retirement Advisor Council elected Kelly Famiglietta, a partner in Charles Stephen and Co. Inc., as a board member representing advisers.

“The pandemic profoundly impacted the very nature of work in the United States and, by extension, relationships between employers and employees,” Famiglietta said in a statement. “I’d like to be at the forefront of our industry’s discussions of how qualified plans can adapt to this new dynamic and continue to add value for both participants and plan sponsors.”

In addition, Amy Glynn, managing partner and chief financial wellness officer at Viking Cove Institute, has been elected as a board member representing practice leaders.

“RAC’s membership is diverse and engaged,” said Glynn in a statement. “We are positioned to help retirement plan consultants expand their practices, scope and reach while adding value and enhancing participant outcomes. It will be my privilege to lead the [Practice Leader] College and to discuss and reveal best practices and opportunities in this dynamic time.”

The RAC’s board provides leadership for all council activities and oversight to executive director Eric Henon. The five-member board includes representatives of each segment of the membership: advisers (2 seats), practice leaders, service providers and investment managers.

Compliance November 10, 2023

Navigating ESG: Forward Thinking

Panelists discuss how new ESG issues will inform investors’ focus and opportunities going forward.

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Environment, social and governance disclosures for companies lurk just around the bend, either directly or via business they conduct in other regions, according to speakers at PLANADVISER’s Navigating ESG Livestream on November 8.

Corporate sustainability regulations coming to Europe next year will be relevant for both domestic companies and those operating in the countries, meaning a number of large U.S. firms, according to Mirtha Kastrapeli, executive director of ESG Corporate Ratings in the ESG practice of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., which also owns PLANADVISER.

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This year, the EU passed deforestation regulation that seeks to ensure companies are not using materials in their supply chain that come from deforestation or breaches of local environmental laws. Separately, the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, while details are still being negotiated, is slated to go into effect at the end of 2024. It calls on companies to identify actual or potential risks to human rights and the environment and to try and mitigate those risks.

“It’s really going to require European companies, but also companies that are doing business in Europe under a specific threshold, to consider their social and environmental impacts of their operations across the supply chain,” Kastrapeli said. “These future regulatory risks are now a real risk. It’s a risk that is coming in the next few years that is going to impact companies and investors.”

Allison Itami, a principal in Groom Law Group, Chartered, said U.S. companies are likely familiar or already working with such ESG disclosures. In California, in particular, a law going beyond Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules will be going into effect in 2025 that mandates corporate climate and climate-related risk disclosures.

“Companies who have a European presence, who have a California presence, are already working on this,” she said. “I also think that none of these are particularly new in concept. How it’s put together, how it’s disclosed might be new, but investors who are already doing their due diligence are asking questions about resiliency and all of these things.”

Mitigating Risk

Kastrapeli said investors should think about ESG as a “risk mitigation tool,” ranging across “operational risk, regulatory risk, reputational risk and, potentially, litigation risk with some of the new regulation.”

The sustainability expert believes there is “good news” for companies and investors in the form of established frameworks for how to report on ESG issues, both regionally and globally.

She noted disclosure methodologies created by the International Sustainability Standards Board, as well as the European Sustainability Reporting Standards in Europe, that are providing clarity on how to consider and report on ESG factors.

There are some differences between the European and ISSB approaches to ESG disclosures, Kastrapeli noted. The EU is focused on a “double-materiality” approach in terms of both “how the world affects a company and how the company affects the world.” Meanwhile, the ISSB is more focused on the financial materiality on the company itself in terms of long-term impact.

Kastrapeli recommended that U.S. investors start with the ISSB standards when approaching ESG disclosure standards.

Retirement Investing, Litigation Risk

When it comes ESG investing in qualified retirement plans, Itami referred to the “all things being equal” test. When used under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the test provides the baseline that if an investment is equal in all pecuniary factors, then it is allowable to consider a “collateral” benefit for inclusion.

“That has fundamentally been the test for decades,” Itami said. “I don’t expect that test to change going forward.”

What has changed, Itami said, is that ESG investing in retirement plans has become “highly politicized,” including multiple lawsuits, creating risk beyond the ERISA framework.

“Even if the legal risk is very clear, that doesn’t prevent someone from suing you over your decision, and it does not prevent that lawsuit from driving up costs,” she said.

That litigation risk is causing “folks to be reluctant to jump in” to implementing sustainable investing in retirement plans, Itami said. For plan sponsors to feel comfortable implementing ESG investing factors, they should seek expert advice that can guide them on the legal standards that already exist under ERISA and through the “all things being equal” test, Itami said.

When it comes to investors considering ESG factors in decisions overall, however, Kastrapeli said the “train has left the station.” A combination of the regulations with demands of investors and companies means it is hard to “disconnect” ESG from the markets.

She noted that ESG analysts are no longer “off in a corner” of an asset manager or pension firm, but part of the core analysis around investment decisions.

“I cannot imagine a world in which we start taking information out when making an investment decision,” she said. “You can call it whatever you want, but [ESG factors] are fundamental to the work.”

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