Deals & People November 23, 2022

Retirement Industry People Moves

Voya expands distribution team; Ryan Financial Group joins Commonwealth; DigitalOcean names chief financial officer and more.

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Voya Expands Distribution Team

Voya’s wealth solutions business has recently promoted Ben Moy to the position of vice president, consultant relations director.

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In his new role, Moy is responsible for developing and leading strategic relationships with some of Voya’s most important intermediary partners serving the wealth solutions business. He will also continue to grow and retain business with important national and regional consultants across all of Voya’s wealth solutions market segments.

Most recently, Moy held the position of strategic growth business development director, in which he focused on leading the sales support team supporting all wealth solution markets, including the RFP and business development teams.

Moy started his new position at Voya on November 1 and reports directly to Lori Commerford, vice president andhead of intermediary relations. He is based in Sutton, Massachusetts, in a hybrid role out of Voya’s Braintree, Massachusetts office. He holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the Boston University Questrom School of Management, as well as Series 6 and 26 FINRA licenses.

Ryan Financial Group Joins Commonwealth

Commonwealth Financial Network, a national firm dedicated to providing financial advisers with holistic, integrated business solutions, announced the addition of Minnesota-based Ryan Financial Group to its network of financial advisers. Formerly with Lincoln Financial Group, chairman Jack Ryan, advisers John Ryan, Greg Stalsberg, Tony Wilson and Ryan Wahlund, along with their support staff, bring nearly $750 million in client assets with them.

As an employee-owned, independent boutique financial advisory firm, Ryan Financial Group addresses clients’ individual needs in an underserved market segment that often gets a one-size-fits-all solution. Focusing on private wealth management and retirement plan consulting, the team’s knowledge and institutional-caliber experience allow them to join their significant expertise with a personalized feel that presents complex ideas in an understandable way to clients. This accessibility, along with their strong ties to the community, has allowed the firm to grow organically: Almost all new clients are referrals from existing clients or centers of influence.

DigitalOcean Names Chief Financial Officer

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., a cloud for developers, startups and small- to mid-sized businesses, announced the appointment of Matt Steinfort as chief financial officer, beginning in January 2023.

Steinfort comes to DigitalOcean from Zayo Group Holdings, a global communications infrastructure platform with $2.6 billion in revenue in 2019, its last year as a public company. Steinfort held the role of CFO and oversaw all financial operations, strategy and mergers and acquisitions, beginning in 2017. Before joining Zayo, Steinfort founded Envysion, a video intelligence software-as-a-service company, where he also served as president and CEO. He has also held leadership roles at ICG Communications, Level 3 Communications, Bain & Company and Cambridge Technology Partners.

Current chief financial officer Bill Sorenson announced his retirement in August. Sorenson, who joined the company with CEO Yancey Spruill in 2019 and led the company through its successful IPO in March 2021, will remain part of the DigitalOcean team as an executive adviser through the summer of 2023 to ensure a smooth and seamless transition.

Ritholtz Wealth Management Appoints President

Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC, a registered investment adviser with $2.8 billion in client assets under management, has announced the hiring of Jay Tini as president. In the newly created role, Tini will support the overall business and the founding partners, including Josh Brown, CEO; Barry Ritholtz, chairman and chief investment officer; Kris Venne, managing partner; and Michael Batnick, managing partner.

A former divisional sales manager at Vanguard, Tini will join RWM in January 2023. At Vanguard, Tini was a critical part of the leadership team that oversaw the firm’s RIA business. He brings more than 20 years of RIA and asset management experience to his new position, having earlier served as a director at global asset management firm AllianceBernstein.

Tini holds an MBA from Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Boston College. At RWM, he will be tasked with day-to-day management of the firm’s operations, thus providing the founding partners an opportunity to offer market commentary, analysis, perspective, financial advice and investment management.

Heffernan Financial Services Acquires Osland Financial Group

Heffernan Financial Services announced the acquisition of Osland Financial Group, located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Michael Osland and his team of four employees joined Heffernan Financial Services effective November 1. The Osland office is San Francisco-based Heffernan’s second office in Arizona and 19th office in the United States.

Michael Osland has 35 years of experience in the financial services industry and founded Osland Financial Group in 1996. Osland specializes in a wide range of financial products and services for individuals and business owners, including wealth management, retirement strategies, insurance and annuity products.

Modera Wealth Management Announces Additions from Stonebridge, Bernhardt

Modera Wealth Management, LLC, a fee-only comprehensive financial planning firm, announced it expanded to Virginia in November 2022 through a transaction with Bernhardt Wealth Management.

The entire Bernhardt team—Gordon Bernhardt, Tim Koehl and Solon Vlasto—has joined Modera, each as a principal and wealth manager. 

Bernhardt Wealth Management was established in 1994 to deliver high-quality service based on the principle of fiduciary care. Since then, the office in McLean, Virginia, has been helping individuals, families and business owners across the country make smart decisions about their money so they can focus on what matters most to them.

Modera also announced the addition of Jennifer Murray, founder of Stonebridge Financial Advisors, LLC to its advisory team. 

Murray founded Stonebridge Financial Advisors in 2004 after the death of her spouse. Since then, she has drawn upon her own life experience to help provide clients with caring financial guidance and direction, with a particular dedication to helping other widowed or recently divorced women through these challenges. Prior to starting her own firm, Murray spent two decades in the financial services industry serving high-net-worth individuals and families.

Compliance November 23, 2022

DOL Rule Greenlights ESG, But Questions Remain

The new final rule seeks to make ESG permissible for ERISA plans, but specific use will still need to play out, according to ERISA attorneys.

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The Department of Labor announced the final rule on ESG investment in ERISA-governed plans Tuesday, solidifying long-awaited permission to use environmental, social and governance analysis in retirement investing, but not making it mandatory. Even as the decision came down, however, there are still details to be worked out for real-world implementation, according to multiple ERISA attorneys.

As legal authority for the rule, the DOL cites Executive Orders 14030, which directed the federal government to protect pensions from climate risk, and Executive Order 13990, which instructed federal agencies to evaluate Trump-era regulations that could be obstacles to improving the environment.

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The new rule is a reversal of a rule published in the closing days of President Donald Trump’s term that intended to prevent consideration of ESG factors in investment choices for ERISA plans. In March 2021, the DOL under President Joe Biden announced it would review that rule and not enforce it in the meantime. The new rule clarifies that ESG factors may be considered in investment choices, among other changes.

One such change was that the Trump-era rule did not allow qualified default investment alternatives (QDIA) to take ESG into account, whereas the new rule permits it, according to Alex Ryan, a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

Plans may also consider “collateral benefits” as a tiebreaker if both investments in question would equally serve the interests of the plan, whereas the Trump-era rule required the investments to be economically indistinguishable, which is a higher standard.

This new standard allows non-financial concerns to be used as a “tiebreaker,” though Elizabeth Goldberg, a partner at the law firm Morgan Lewis, says those sorts of situations are relatively rare.

The new rule also allows plan sponsors to include investment menu options that take participants non-financial interests and preferences into account, as long as those menu options are still prudent. This provision is intended to increase plan participation by allowing sponsors to provide investment incentive beyond economic returns.

It is not clear, however, how participant preferences are to be measured in order to support a prudent investment option that might not have been included absent those expressed preferences.

Bradford Campbell, a partner at the law firm Faegre Drinker, says it is unclear if a sponsor should wait for explicit requests, or if it should send out surveys to gauge participant interest in certain funds.

Goldberg says these options still cannot sacrifice returns or take on additional risks, but it will take more time for it to become clear what sponsors can consider adequate participant demand or interest.

David Levine, co-chair of the Groom Law Group’s plan sponsor practice, agrees that it will take some time for the precise meaning of the rule to be understood. When asked if participant demand for certain investments could be a defense against possible ERISA-related litigation, his response was that all involved will “have to see how this plays out.”

Ryan says the DOL has not spelled out a process for sponsors to solicit or receive participant preferences for this purpose, and it ultimately may vary from employer to employer. This menu provision might provide some cover for sponsors who like to consider employee preference in investment options.

Several industry actors came out quickly in support of the new rule.

Charlie Nelson, the chief growth officer at Voya Financial said the menu provision could help firms attract competitive talent since many younger workers are seeking ESG-informed retirement options. Ceres, a sustainability non-profit, said that the new rule makes it easier to invest in ESG, which is a positive because climate risk impacts financial performance.

The Insured Retirement Institute said it had been concerned about the initial rule proposal but is glad to see that the group’s recommendation of permitting ESG strategies rather than requiring them was ultimately accepted.

Campbell of Faegre Drinker explains that the perceived neutrality of the final rule, as opposed to the proposal, makes it less likely to be revoked or significantly modified by a future Republican administration.

He noted however, that this depends in part on who the next Republican president might be. Having already tried to remove ESG considerations from ERISA plans, Trump could do so again if he were elected in 2024, Campbell says. Since this new regulation is a formal rule, instead of interpretative guidance, it would be more difficult to reverse, as any anti-ESG administration would have to go through the normal notice and comment process to approve a new rule.

Goldberg concurs and adds that the rule adds some useful clarity for her foreign clients whose domestic laws require fiduciaries to account for ESG. Notable members of the Republican Party do not agree that this new rule is “neutral,” however. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina and the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, released a statement Tuesday in which she said the Biden administration was prioritizing political considerations over retirement security.

“The Biden administration’s new rule jeopardizes the financial security of many retirement savers, especially workers and retirees who may be put into ESG investments by default,” she said in the statement. “The new rule overturns the strong protections implemented by the Trump administration, which guarded retirement savers from investment managers seeking to advance social and political objectives unrelated to the financial benefits to workers and retirees. The Biden administration is choosing its climate and social agenda over retirees and workers. This is bad news.”

On the Democratic side of the aisle, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington and the chair of the Senate HELP Committee, said in an emailed statement that, “Financial security is about planning for the future, and you just can’t plan for the future if you aren’t allowed to consider the environmental, social, and governance factors that are shaping it.”

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