Carson Group Expands Retirement Planning With Equity Stake in Northwest

The adviser network aims to better compete for retirement plan business.  


Carson Group Holdings LLC announced an equity partnership with Northwest Capital Management Inc., an advisory firm of 13 serving more than $5 billion in assets under management, including workplace retirement plan advisement and services.
 

“With more clients seeking holistic planning solutions, our partnership with NWCM is another part of the strategic puzzle that will allow us to better compete in the retirement planning space,” said Jamie Hopkins, managing partner of wealth solutions for Carson Group. “The team at NWCM has spent the last three decades building a tremendous business. We are excited to learn from them and continue to build on the value we can bring to the table.” 

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NWCM provides financial advisement, wealth management, estate planning and retirement planning for individuals and businesses.  

NWCM will continue to be led by Brent Petty, managing director, partner and senior investment adviser, and Fred Payne Jr., a partner and senior investment adviser. Founded in 1998 in Portland, Oregon, the firm also has an office in Seattle.   

“Our affiliation with Carson will allow us to expand our resources considerably, gaining a larger support staff for client service, financial planning, investment research, portfolio analysis, trading and investment monitoring,” said Petty in a statement. “This will enable our teams to better provide the guidance clients require to achieve their personal financial goals.” 

In addition to the partnership with NWCM, Carson Group has built up its retirement plan offerings through recent strategic partnerships with Vestwell, BOK Financial Advisor Trust Services and online service Trust & Will, as well as several recent strategic hires, according to recent firm announcements.  

Anti-ESG Bill Would Require Only Pecuniary Factors to Be Considered

Kentucky Representative Andy Barr introduced a bill aimed at returning investment regulations to a Trump-era standard.


Representative Andy Barr, R-Kentucky, introduced legislation called the Ensuring Sound Guidance Act in the House on Wednesday, a bill which would require advisers, broker/dealers and ERISA fiduciaries to act in a client’s best interest solely on pecuniary factors.

The language of the bill closely mirrors a bill which would have overturned the Department of Labor’s new rule on environmental, social and governance factors from November 2022, which President Joe Biden vetoed in March, as well as a Senate bill from the last Congress proposed by Senator Mike Braun, R-Indiana.

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The Ensuring Sound Guidance Act would amend the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to require advisers and broker/dealers to only consider pecuniary factors, unless a client consented in writing to the consideration of other factors. In that case, the fiduciary would be required to explain the potential costs of considering those other factors.

The Employee Retirement Income Act would also be amended to likewise require ERISA fiduciaries to only consider pecuniary factors. The only time a non-pecuniary factor could be considered is “If a fiduciary is unable to distinguish between or among investment alternatives.” Even then, the fiduciary would have to document why pecuniary factors were inadequate and how the non-pecuniary factor(s) considered were in the participant’s interest and provide a comparison of the investment options, using economic criteria such as diversification and liquidity.

The language of “unable to distinguish” closely tracks the rule enacted during former President Donald Trump’s term concerning ESG factors and is considered a tougher standard than that of the Biden-era rule which permits “collateral” factors to be considered in choosing investment options if both options would equally serve the interests of the plan.

The Biden-era rule, currently being challenged in at least two lawsuits, also permits collateral factors to be considered if they are considered by popular participant demand and if including such an investment would increase participation.

The “pecuniary” language is said by multiple administration officials to have a “chilling effect” on ESG investing. The primary reason is not that defenders of ESG think ESG factors are irrelevant on a risk-return basis, but that a future Republican administration could determine ESG factors as non-pecuniary, and that language favored by Republicans could be ambiguous enough to invite litigation.

Barr’s bill demonstrates this posture. The bill also requires the comptroller general, who heads the Government Accountability Office, to study “underfunded state and local pension plans” and their impact on the federal government, specifically by looking at “the extent to which such pension plans subordinate the pecuniary interests of participants and beneficiaries to environmental, social, governance or other objectives.”

The implication of this study is that some pension plans could be underfunded in part due to their consideration of ESG factors. The bill also requires the comptroller to investigate “legislative and administrative actions that, if implemented at the Federal level, would prevent such pension plans from subordinating the interests of participants and beneficiaries to environmental, social or governance objectives.”

Barr’s bill is unique in that most bills reported as “anti-ESG” rarely make explicit mention of ESG in their text, but Barr’s does. The file distributed to media was even named “BARR_ESG_Act.pdf.”

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