Carson Group Starts Beta Testing for New Financial Wellness Program

Recent mergers and acquisitions have seen some traditional wealth management firms bring workplace retirement plan capabilities in-house. Now another of the country’s largest registered investment advisories is looking to add its own financial wellness program to serve retirement plan participants.

Jamie Hopkins

Carson Group Holdings LLC, which earlier this year took an equity stake in workplace and wealth adviser Northwest Capital Management Inc., is currently beta testing a financial wellness program to serve plan participants, according to Jamie Hopkins, Carson’s managing partner of wealth solutions. The service would add to the RIA’s push into retirement plan advisement capabilities that also includes a recent partnership with small 401(k) plan provider Vestwell.

Through its recent dealmaking, Omaha, Nebraska-based Carson can now assist clients with all sizes of workplace retirement plans, Hopkins says, but as its network of advisers is consistently asking for additional holistic financial planning services, the firm is working on a more robust financial wellness program.

“Our next phase [of retirement plan focus] is participant experience,” Jamie Hopkins says. “We’re spending the next 18 months or so on that.”

Hopkins says the firm is currently working with clients on participant education and retirement readiness, but it is also focused on establishing a full-scale program available to its advisers.

“I think the area of participant education is key for the future,” Hopkins says. “How do we start delivering this base level of financial planning and retirement readiness to participants?”

The RIA will be joining other large wealth managers who have financial wellness offerings, including Edelman Financial Engines, which launched an in-house program last year, and retirement and wealth aggregator CAPTRUST Financial Advisors.

Meanwhile, numerous financial wellness vendors provide participant services for the adviser community. Last week, a female-founded firm called Pocketnest Inc. rolled out a financial wellness platform for independent financial advisers, and Financial Finesse Ventures recently announced an investment in OfColor Inc., a minority-owned financial wellness platform “unapologetically focused on the financial empowerment of employees of color.”

Having the ability to serve the needs of everyday retirement plan savers is key to the Carson Group’s overall financial planning mission, Hopkins says. The goal of the program is not, he says, to “pull through” retirement plan participants into the wealth management side of the business, but rather to have a program for participants who are not a good fit for individual advisement.

“Most of our business in wealth management from the Carson perspective comes from the business owner, and we help them set up a plan,” he says. “That’s really our core: delivering that service.”

Regardless of the wealth management link, Hopkins still sees the qualified plan space on its own as a good business.

“There is fee compression there, there is a lot of liability … but it’s still a good business,” he says. “We’re helping people save for retirement. We’re providing education and services. That just goes back to the core of who Carson is: We want to be the most trusted in financial advice.”

In addition to participant education, Hopkins says he sees room for advancement in the investment and technology side of retirement planning. He recently joined the board of Income Labs, a retirement income management firm with participant offerings such as a retirement stress test, a one-page interactive of a person’s financial life and tax-planning software.