Deals & People February 7, 2023

OneDigital Acquires $500M Florida Retirement and Wealth Management Shop

The Florida Pension Group is OneDigital’s seventh such partnership in 12 months as it expands its retirement-linked wealth management capabilities.

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OneDigital Investment Advisors, a subsidiary of employee benefits and insurance provider OneDigital, has added the $500 million Florida Pension Group to its growing network of wealth managers with ties to workplace retirement plans.

The acquisition of St. Johns, Florida-based FPG is OneDigital’s seventh retirement-and-wealth partnership in the past 12 months and the firm’s 17th office in Florida, OneDigital’s advisory arm announced on Monday. FPG provides retirement plan services to more than 100 businesses and wealth management to more than 270 households. The firm’s president and founder, Troy Tummond, will join OneDigital and its team of advisers, including Steve Carter, John Hudson, John Pomroy and Landon Strickland, according to the announcement.

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“The acquisition continues a strategy that OneDigital began in 2022, focusing on adding firms with a strong focus on wealth management, according to Andrew Jefferys, OneDigital’s recently named national vice president of wealth management solutions. That’s a shift from the firm’s prior strategy of seeking businesses with strong retirement focus and some wealth management.”

“Beginning in 2022, we took a stronger rotation into wealth management, identifying and acquiring hybrid firms that understand the retirement-to-wealth bridge but ‘major’ in wealth management,” Jefferys said in comments last week, referring to OneDigital’s overall strategy, not specifically to the FPG acquisition.

Jefferys noted that the Overland Park, Kansas-based OneDigital will continue this strategy in 2023, aligning with owners who see value in connecting to OneDigital’s platform of more than 100,000 employer clients.

“OneDigital is the right partner for our firm because of its proven track record of growth and unique ability to bridge the gap between retirement and wealth management, giving our team the platform to deliver even more for our clients and help them achieve their vision,” FPG’s Tummond said in a statement.

Owning the Process

OneDigital’s Jefferys, who joined the firm in late 2021 through an acquisition of Gouldin & McCarthy LLC, says the key to providing holistic retirement saving and wealth management is by giving the plan participant, and clients, “ownership in the planning process.”

“As an industry-leading retirement plan advisory firm, we are acutely aware of the needs and corresponding pitfalls plan participants face when taking advice from financial advisers,” he says. “Our best client relationships center around an independent and holistic financial planning experience, not a simple investment recommendation.”

By developing a financial planning platform that can serve both plan participants and high-net-worth individuals, OneDigital can meet client needs such as investment management, insurance services, tax and estate planning and business consulting, Jefferys says.

“When the client’s financial plan is in direct or indirect conflict with our own business interest, the best and only way forward is full transparency for the client,” he says. “This means transparency of fees, services for those fees and alternatives the client has [for solutions].”

Rapidly Changing Landscape

After the FPG acquisition, OneDigital’s assets under management have risen to about $108.9 billion, representing more than 1 million participants and 41,000 individual accounts.

Jefferys says that before his previous firm became part of OneDigital’s network, it was actually in the market to be an acquirer.

“With the rapidly changing landscape of fintech offerings, integration partners and regulatory complexities, our analysis showed the economies of scale needed to compete for the next decade in this business required a much larger team than a boutique advisor firm could provide,” he recalls.

Gouldin & McCarthy eventually agreed to the OneDigital acquisition, as it was “the only firm offering us the ability to honestly say a partnership was good for us as business owners and great for our clients,” Jefferys says.

Another part of OneDigital’s strategy, Jefferys says, is partnerships with minority-owned and minority-operated firms to increase diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in “an industry that needs it.” In January, OneDigital acquired minority-owned insurance brokerage Bradley & Bradley Associates Inc., expanding the aggregators presence with 28 offices throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

In Practice February 7, 2023

Financial Sector Faces Growing Return-to-Work Gender Gap

New research among financial service and insurance companies reveals women’s careers are more at risk as workplace flexibility begins to tighten.

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There’s a new gender gap emerging in the financial sector as return to office life becomes more prevalent: a flexibility gap between women and men, according to Mercer’s latest “inside employees’ minds” research.

The top three reasons women would leave their job in financial services or insurance are insufficient pay (54%), burnout due to demanding workload (33%) and lack of flexibility (28%), according to the survey. That compares to men, who listed the top factors for leaving as insufficient pay (44%), insufficient healthcare benefits (33%), and burn out (29%).

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Since the pandemic, “Flexible work arrangements provided women with the opportunity to balance their work and personal responsibilities, essentially eliminating the need for women to choose between advancing their careers and caring for their families,” says Christopher Poole, Mercer’s senior director of financial services and insurance. “This realization has resulted in flex-working increasingly becoming a priority for women when they think about staying with their current employer or seeking a new one.”

While that statement could apply to all workers, among those surveyed, 34% of women said they are full-time remote, compared to only 19% of men. Hybrid work arrangements are more even, with 34% of women in hybrid arrangements and 38% of men. Implicit bias based on a person’s work-location arrangement may have a negative impact on employees, according to Poole.

“Companies should start with ensuring there are no implicit biases against those who work flexibly, whether in performance management, career opportunities, access benefits or anything else,” he says. “Doing so will mitigate some of the concerns women in this industry face—which in turn, will help improve an organization’s reputation as an employer of choice and result in lower turnover, increased engagement and a rise in productivity.”

While the gender pay gap has shown improvement over the years, it is still a key factor in women working in finance being less satisfied than men, according to Mercer’s research. When employees were asked if they are “compensated fairly for what I do,” only 63% of women said yes, compared to 84% of men.

More Than a Number

When it comes to the financial adviser space in particular, employing fewer women in the workforce is not just bad for diversity, but a detriment to the clients the industry exists to serve, says Renée Baker, head of advisor inclusion networks for Raymond James. Baker runs an annual symposium for women in the financial adviser space and notes research that shows a dramatic shift in trillions of dollars of wealth that will be controlled by women in coming years.

“When we think about this wealth transfer, we need to think about whether the advisers are representative of our clients,” she says.

Baker, who is not associated with the Mercer research, says to create change, it is vital for people in finance to see others like them working and succeeding in the industry. Raymond James’ financial adviser symposium for women will be in its 29th year when it runs in September, but the gathering is as important as ever, considering female representation in the profession has been pretty flat in recent years at around 18%, Baker says.

The symposium will be “geared toward helping women advisers be the best advisers,” she says. “What does it matter if I’m a woman or part of another group? We’re not trying to separate individuals, but [we’re] enhancing the value that they bring to the table.”

Purpose-Driven Approach

According to the Mercer research, four out of 10 women in financial services and insurance are considering leaving their current employer, which compares to two out of 10 men contemplating a move.

There are purpose-driven approaches firms can take to not lose these valuable employees, according to Poole, such as:

  • Conducting regular employee listening/sensing surveys and engaging employee resource groups;
  • Improving transparency across the enterprise (pay, gender, race/ethnicity, etc.);
  • Utilizing organizational and market data to objectively identify areas of unbalanced talent distribution;
  • Building a robust talent pipeline that extends a few levels down in the organization, by mapping talent internally and externally;
  • Defining and communicating the organization’s flexible working strategy;
  • Focusing compensation investments on high-performing and critical talent segments; and
  • Utilizing effective short-term and long-term incentive designs to recognize performance, retain talent and align interests.

    “When looking across the industry, the companies that are responding to these challenges effectively are taking a purpose-driven and human-centric approach,” Poole says.

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