Advisory M&A News – 11/13/23

Hub International adds Renaissance Benefit Advisors; Wealth Enhancement Group acquires Retirement Advisory Group; Hightower announces strategic investment in Resource Consulting Group.

Hub International Adds Renaissance Benefit Advisors

Hub International Ltd. announced it has acquired the assets of Renaissance Benefit Advisors Group LLC. RBA, located in New York City and Atlanta, is a retirement plan consulting and institutional investment advisory. Founder Ellen Lander and the RBA team will join Hub Mid-Atlantic. 

“We’re excited to be joining the Hub team,” Lander said in a statement. “They share our deep commitment to provide an unsurpassed level of proactive service, and we’re confident that they are the right choice in supporting us and our clients as we continue to grow.”

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The move continues to strengthen Hub’s retirement and private wealth practice. Its registered investment advisory affiliates provide services to clients whose assets total approximately $148 billion.  

“The commitment of Ellen and the RBA team to being a trusted ‘fiduciary partner’ to their clients makes them an excellent fit for Hub as we continue to grow our presence in the Northeast,” Joe DeNoyior, Hub Retirement and Private Wealth’s president, said in a statement.

Wealth Enhancement Group Acquires Retirement Advisory Group

Wealth Enhancement Group, a national independent wealth management firm with more than $68.3 billion in total client assets, announced the acquisition of Retirement Advisory Group, a hybrid registered investment adviser in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

The addition of Retirement Advisory Group adds another office location to the Twin Cities area, where Wealth Enhancement Group’s national headquarters is located, and increases the number of Minnesota offices to 15.

Retirement Advisory Group’s team of three financial advisers and two employees, led by founder Terry Kerber, will bring approximately $150 million in assets under management. Since 1992, Retirement Advisory Group has been a family firm looking to help families with their retirement needs.

“We’re grateful that Retirement Advisory Group decided to join Wealth Enhancement Group,” Jeff Dekko, CEO of Wealth Enhancement Group, said in a statement. “The team will be able to take advantage of additional resources and support as their business continues to grow.  Both of our firms are focused on putting clients and their families in the best position to achieve their financial goals.”

Hightower Announces Strategic Investment in Resource Consulting Group

Hightower announced it has made a strategic investment in Resource Consulting Group, a fee-only registered investment adviser based in Orlando, Florida, with approximately $2.5 billion in assets under management as of June 2023.

Founded in 1988, Resource Consulting Group offers academic-based investment management, financial planning and retirement planning services to a nationwide client base of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth households, as well as select institutional clients. Resource Consulting Group has a credentialed staff of 30 employees, most of whom are long tenured.

“Resource Consulting Group’s commitment to their clients, alongside their unwavering dedication to fostering personal growth of their employees, aligns perfectly with our core values,” Bob Oros, Hightower chairman and CEO, said in a statement. 

Hightower has announced 11 acquisitions so far this year. Hightower offers its range of services across 135 financial advisory practices in 35 states and the District of Columbia. As of June 30, Hightower’s assets under management were approximately $131 billion.

Navigating ESG: Surveying the Landscape

Knowledge about ESG, integration and greenwashing remains low, according to experts at a PLANADVISER event.


There is much work to be done for institutional investors to come to terms with not just how to integrate sustainable investing into their decisionmaking, but how to define it in the first place, according to panelists addressing institutional investors.

The average plan adviser and sponsor still have difficulty understanding what investment solution falls under the category of environmental, social and governance factors, said Bonnie Treichel, founder and chief solutions officer at Endeavor Retirement, during the “Surveying the Landscape” session of PLANADVISER’s ESG livestream on November 8.

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Not Just a Label

“How do people really understand this?” Treichel asked. “It’s really hard, because a lot of times, I’ll ask the question about ESG and an investment lineup, and the perspective that I hear is, ‘Well, if it doesn’t say ESG in the title of the fund, or if it’s not named that, or if it doesn’t say sustainable, then we don’t have ESG in our lineup.’”

Treichel continued to say that true ESG integration, defined by the CFA Institute as ongoing consideration of ESG factors within an investment analysis and decisionmaking process with the aim to improve risk-adjusted returns, requires far knowledge about a fund than its title to avoid “greenwashing,” in which a company tries to appear more sustainable than it actually is.

“Distinguishing between something that has been greenwashed versus what has actual signs of integration really takes rolling up their sleeves and doing the work,” said Treichel. “I think that is really one of the big problems for the masses of advisers and plan sponsors, not having access to the tools and resources to be able to get the real issue.”

While the Department of Labor allows for ESG factors to be considered in retirement plan investment menus, it may not be easy to integrate or even know how to include them. Treichel said there remains a very large education gap that prevents average investment professionals from accurately assessing ESG considerations.

Sustainable Stock Picking

When it comes to market investing, ESG stocks are also difficult to define and benchmark, said Witold Henisz, the vice dean and faculty director of the ESG Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. But that is not necessarily uncommon in the world of equities.

“It’s very hard to ascertain what is an ESG stock in the same way as it is hard to ascertain what is the value stock, what is the growth stock,” Henisz said.

The lines get no clearer when it comes to performance of stocks that include ESG factors, which, again, isn’t necessarily any different from the rest of the market.

Henisz pointed out that research shows no on-average benefit to using an ESG strategy—but that can also be said for many other strategies, as no criteria consistently outperforms the market.

No one can provide “the formula that would help you pick the stocks that would outperform the market over the next five or 10 years—it doesn’t exist,” Henisz said. “Sometimes [it is] value stocks, sometimes growth stocks, sometimes the big industrials, sometimes the emerging markets. ESG is an overlay on top of each of those investment strategies that should allow them to do better.”

Henisz provided the example of the current Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars. Fossil fuel stocks are going to outperform, and during that time, ESG stocks, which tend to be more environmentally considerate companies, are going to underperform.

“ESG strategies clearly don’t underperform the market,” Henisz said. “Under some periods, under some strategies, ESG strategies are going to outperform the market, and there are plenty of studies that show that for certain industries, certain years and certain datasets. Would you ever want to take that ability away from your financial adviser?”

Henisz concluded that definitions and standards will be key to navigating the future ESG landscape: “We need to have more regulation to root out greenwash and really set a standard that if you’re going to say you’re doing ESG integration, you’ve got to meet these criteria.”

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