OneDigital Promotes Bailey to Grow Northeast

OneDigital announced this week that Emily Bailey will be taking the regional managing principal position for the Northeast to continue expanding the aggregator’s footprint both organically and through acquisitions and partnerships.

Bailey, who had most recently been managing principal for Connecticut, was chosen after an internal and external search, and will start in the new role July 1. She will replace Brian Driscoll, who retired in April after over a decade in the role.

Bailey, an employee benefits and health specialist, joined OneDigital almost a decade ago when the digital benefits advisory she joined out of college was acquired by the aggregator. She has in recent years spearheaded further growth for the firm, overseeing the acquisition of three new teams since 2020.

Emily Bailey

She says future acquisitions will be focused on the wealth management and financial planning space as the demand grows from clients to provide advisement services to participants.

“We’ll be building in the Northeast through more investments and acquisitions to better prepare our teams to have those conversations [with participants],” she says. “I would expect over the next three to five years some very large investments to grow in the region.”

She notes that, as the benefits industry has evolved, employers are looking for holistic services that can guide workers through life moments such as “having their first child, buying a home, getting ready for retirement and all the different areas that now as a business we’re getting to help humans through.”

OneDigital has been making steady acquisitions in recent years across retirement, wealth and insurance, bringing its current size to 200 offices overseeing more than $100 billion in client assets.

Bailey says the acquisition focus will be on firms that can add talent to her team, but also embrace a “growth organization” that is continuing to build and evolve.

“We want to make sure that the teams that we bring on will really embrace being on the OneDigital team,” she says. “We need people around the table who will help us build things and have an entrepreneurial heart.”

In her new role, Bailey will report to Chief Operating Officer Bill Carew and oversee about 30 offices and just under 400 employees across Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

When asked about an evolving retirement landscape in which recordkeepers and other players are also seeking to work with participants, Bailey says the future of the space will take partnership to meet demand.

“We are helping businesses, but we are also helping the human and the person that is attached to those businesses,” she says. “That has been really exciting to me and the growth path that we’ve been on.”