Nationwide Shifts Advertising to Highlight Financial, Plan Services

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. is leveraging its spokesperson deal with former football player Peyton Manning to highlight what the firm sees as a growth area: financial and retirement plan services.

With the professional football season set to start Thursday evening, the firm announced its new campaign, “So Much More,” highlighting its financial services businesses including individual financial services and support of more than 2.7 million employer sponsored retirement plans.

Positioned as an answer to the “growing need from Americans seeking financial security” and the company’s own “explosive growth” in financial services, the commercials highlight Manning talking about Nationwide being more than an insurance company. In one version, he compares the firm’s versatility to his own, with a joke that he is also known as “Paintin Manning,” a signature he paints onto a self-portrait.

Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide is a personal lines property and casualty insurance company; its “Nationwide Is on Your Side” commercials during football games have featured Manning for years. But in an announcement Thursday, the firm noted that its financial services division, Nationwide Financial, has also been a growth driver, doubling sales in the past decade and currently holding $400 billion in client assets.

That division is active in financial services markets, including recordkeeping public and private sector retirement plans and financial products and services, including annuities, pension risk transfers and mutual funds, among others.

Nationwide is the 10th^h-largest recordkeeper by defined contribution plan assets among providers that took the 2024 Recordkeeping Survey by PLANSPONSOR, a sister publication of PLANADVISER. Nationwide ranked No. 1 in the number of 457 government plans it recordkeeps, according to the survey.

The firm has relationships with more than 400,000 advisers, with about 130,000 advising on at least one qualified retirement plan, according to Amelia Dunlap, vice president of Nationwide Retirement Solutions marketing, though she notes that figure “narrows” when considering advisers with at least 30% of their book of business coming from plans.

Dunlap says via email that Nationwide sees “both demand and growth” in retirement plans, based on two trends.

“First, a shift we’re seeing with firms and advisers to expand beyond their wealth management practice into workplace retirement plans,” she says. “This is creating a huge opportunity for the workplace retirement plan to serve as an entry point into building an adviser’s book of business with individual clients as well. Nationwide is partnering closely with firms to help their generalist advisers begin this journey into retirement plans, serving as a very ‘adviser-friendly’ recordkeeper that won’t compete with this individual business.”

In addition, she cites “tremendous interest in growth” in investment products that help plan participants turn savings into pension-like income in retirement.

Nationwide was relatively early to offer defined contribution in-plan annuities, announcing in 2020 investments that pair annuities with target-date funds. In 2024, it expanded those offerings with what it calls Dynamic Default, which automatically, at an age designated by the employer, defers some participant savings into an annuity.

“This is attracting new plans and partnerships and helping us grow relationships with existing plans,” Dunlap says.

The firm’s shift toward advertising these services to a national audience is, in part, due to the ‘Peak 65’ moment in the U.S., which the firm sees as leading to “significantly increased demand for solutions that can promote retirement security.”

“There is a huge opportunity for the financial services industry to meet the evolving needs of Americans seeking retirement and financial security,” said John Carter, president and COO of Nationwide Financial, in a statement. “This campaign is built to help us meet that moment.”

Carter also noted a few ways the company will seek to expand the business, including:

• Partnerships with firms and distribution partners;
• Further marketing its protected retirement products;
• Introducing CareMatters Together, which combines life and long-term care insurance; and
• Investing “millions” to modernize its platforms for consumers and business partners.