Uncategorized April 1, 2024

Advisory M&A News – 4/1/24

NFP acquires Get Medical Plans; UBS Financial Advisors announces formation of Stone Harbor Group; Wealth Enhancement Group adds Piermont Wealth Management; and more.

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NFP Acquires Get Medical Plans, a Health Insurance Solutions Specialist

NFP Corp. announced its acquisition of Get Medical Plans Lt., an independent private medical insurance intermediary. Get Medical Plans Founders Marc Benjamin and Sanjeev Mallipeddi will continue to lead and manage the London-based business.

“Adding the expertise of the Get Medical Plans team and their solutions will help NFP better support our clients and grow our presence in the rapidly expanding independent medical insurance market,” said Iain Chadwick, NFP’s managing director of employee benefits in Europe, said in a statement.

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With more than 40 years of combined experience in private health care, Benjamin and Mallipeddi can now, via NFP, introduce their services to more clients navigating health insurance.

“We are delighted to join NFP, especially as the company continues to expand in the U.K.,” Benjamin and Mallipeddi said in a joint statement. “This partnership will enable Get Medical Plans to continue to deliver a first-class service to our clients by accessing the resources and range of services within a global organisation, while also giving us the ability to reach new customers.”

UBS Financial Advisors Announces Formation of Stone Harbor Group

UBS Wealth Management USA announced the formation of Stone Harbor Group, a new team of financial advisers in its Hartford, Connecticut, office. The team oversees $1.3 billion in client assets and has more than 150 years of collective investment experience, according to the announcement.

The nine-person team includes financial advisers Richard Cyphers, Gerald Dubey, Douglas Domian, Scott Mintz, David Sacharko and Sean Siana, as well as client service associates Christian Foxen, Jake Heyde and Aranzazu Suarez.

Cyphers helps families consider their objectives, liability requirements, risk tolerance and wealth transfer expectations. Prior to joining UBS in 2009, Rick was a senior adviser for Citi Family Office, where he provided wealth management services to private clients.

“Our client base continues to evolve, as do their needs, and this newly integrated team is well-positioned to meet those needs and provide an enhanced client experience,” said William Cholawa, a UBS market executive for Greater New England, in a statement.

Wealth Enhancement Group Announces the Addition of Piermont Wealth Management Inc

Wealth Enhancement Group LLC announced the acquisition of Piermont Wealth Management Inc., an independent registered investment adviser located in Boca Raton, Florida, and Melville, New York. Piermont manages more than $226 million in client assets and is led by CEO Philip Capell.

Founded in 2000, Piermont primarily provides wealth management services such as investment management, estate planning, gift and income tax planning, retirement planning and financial planning to pre-retirees within 10 years of retirement and retirees.

“We are very excited to join Wealth Enhancement Group,” said Capell in a statement. “We plan to use Wealth Enhancement Group’s strong investment research and management team, a wide array of financial planning services and experienced back-office support staff to help us satisfy our clients’ needs and objectives now and into the future.”

The Piermont addition marks Wealth Enhancement Group’s 12th location in Florida.

Clearstead Advisors Announces Acquisition of Wilbanks Smith and Thomas

Clearstead Advisors LLC, a registered financial adviser, has acquired the assets of Wilbanks Smith & Thomas Asset Management LLC, a Norfolk, Virginia-based wealth and investment management firm with more than $5 billion of assets under management.

WST was founded in 1990 by CEO Wayne Wilbanks, who will continue to lead the division in Norfolk and the Mid-Atlantic states. Its 45 employees provide financial advisory services to families and individuals, institutions and financial service firms nationwide.

“We are philosophically similar to Clearstead in our client approach and a strong complement geographically, given our presence in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern states,” said Wilbanks in a statement. “Most importantly, our clients will benefit from Clearstead’s family office planning capabilities, alternative investments platform, in-house research, and wealth management capabilities.”

After the merger, Clearstead Advisors and its subsidiaries will have approximately $44 billion in total assets under advisement, including $20 billion in total assets under management. The advisory business of WST will be rebranded as Clearstead Advisory Solutions, a division of Clearstead Advisors LLC, and continue serving clients from offices in Norfolk and Roanoke, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Client Service April 1, 2024

Tackling Cumbersome ‘Bac(k)’ Office Tasks

Former recordkeeper executive Shane Hanson launches Freedom 360 suite aimed at streamlining retirement services and boosting participant engagement.

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Shane Hanson launched Freedom Fiduciaries LLC in 2023 with the goal of providing “fiduciary freedom” to plan sponsors while also providing back-office support to plan advisers. On Monday, the company launched a set of capabilities aimed at furthering those goals.

Freedom 360, backed by machine learning, is a proprietary retirement plan management system designed to automate “cumbersome and repetitive tasks that have traditionally undermined efficiency and accuracy in service delivery,” according to an announcement from Freedom Fiduciaries. “This automation enables advisers to focus on strategic decision-making, enhance client service, and boost participant engagement.”

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Shane Hanson

Advisers who partner with Freedom Fiduciaries on its Bac(k) Office platform will have access to Freedom 360, including integration of plan participants if the adviser works directly on participant engagement. Fees are based on the “selected options and the scale of business,” according to Hanson. The firm is currently collaborating with more than 24 adviser firms, as well as financial services firms such as banks and credit unions.

Hanson founded Freedom Fiduciaries after stints as a regional sales director at Empower and Voya Financial. Those roles partially shaped his desire to create a firm that would tackle 401(k) back-office tasks so advisers could focus on plan sponsors and participants.

“I have spent nearly 13 years collaborating with thousands of advisers, ranging from specialists to brand new generalists,” Hanson says. “I saw a gap in the market for a solution that could solve real problems. This gap prompted the creation of a solution aimed at addressing the shortage of specialists within the industry.”

A recurring issue, according to Hanson, occurs when generalist advisers bring in a retirement plan wholesaler to sell the plan, often adding an institutional 3(38) provider without “addressing key challenges faced by plan sponsors, such as 3(16) administration, resolution of issues like payroll discrepancies, understanding regulatory updates like SECURE 2.0 and fulfilling fiduciary duties.”

Bac(k) Office, he says, is designed to solve some of the issue, while offering 3(38) services, but not making them mandatory.

Tech-Enabled

The new Freedom 360 comes in a few parts. At its “heart,” according to the release, is Participant (k)onnect, a participant engagement engine that relies on artificial intelligence to assist in areas ranging from personalized communication to a participant’s separation from the plan.

Another part of the offering is Kaleó, a proprietary bot with the goal of reducing administrative workloads related to retirement plan servicing. The bot will automate areas such as “quarterly reporting, investment data compilation, meeting minutes, educational presentations, plan highlights, and the generation of plan sponsor reports,” according to the announcement. It is also designed to both monitor service tasks by client and track service activity according to agreements, as well as schedule benchmarking, trustee and educational meetings.

A third aspect of the offering is the Fiduciary Freedom Center, a central repository for plan sponsors and partner advisers to access documents such as plan agreements, open cases, regulatory reminders, plan details and fiduciary training materials.

“This eliminates the inefficiency of using multiple, uncoordinated portals,” according to the firm. “Additionally, Kaleó integrates with the center, automatically archiving meeting minutes, investment reviews, quarterly reports, benchmarking results, and more, further enhancing the system’s efficiency and ease of use.”

The center also automates comparative tools for the adviser for fee tracking and benchmarking, as well as requests for proposal for service providers, prompting current providers to submit information and then creating a presentation for the client, according to Freedom Fiduciaries.

Finally, the new offering provides a simple, one-click tool for sending educational material to participants, which can also be sent via the Participant (k)onnect tool, according to the firm.

Enhanced Capabilities

Cristina Hansen, vice president of client services, joined the firm after working at advisories including Pensionmark Financial Group LLC.

“With the deployment of Freedom 360, we’re not just enhancing our capabilities; we’re revolutionizing the way we service retirement plans,” Hansen said in a statement with the launch. “By automating routine tasks and integrating cutting-edge technology, we’re now able to focus our energies more on being proactive and solving complex problems for our clients.“

The firm currently serves nearly 100 plans and is in the process of onboarding more books of business and partnerships, according to Hanson. A persistent pain point, however, is “accessing information” from recordkeepers, he notes.

“Most recordkeepers are reluctant to provide an API or disclose email and phone numbers for participants, a matter that requires industry-wide attention,” he says. “To tackle this issue, we have dedicated a full-time individual to manage census information, and we are developing additional tools to streamline the process of data integration from recordkeepers into our system.”

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