Retirement Industry People Moves

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America has appointed Jay Rosenblum senior vice president of government affairs.

Based in Washington, D.C., Rosenblum will report to Deanna Mulligan, president and chief executive officer. He will set the strategic direction of Guardian’s state and federal advocacy efforts and lead the Government Affairs team in support of the company’s goals.

Rosenblum joins from The Hartford, where he was senior vice president, associate general counsel, and director of government affairs. Prior to joining The Hartford, he spent nine years representing the accounting profession in Washington, D.C., first at Ernst & Young and later as the head of Grant Thornton’s Government Affairs office.

Earlier in his career, Rosenblum held several roles in the Clinton Administration, serving at the U.S. Department of Labor, in the White House Counsel’s office, and as the White House’s Executive Director of the first National Summit on Retirement Savings.

Rosenblum earned his J.D. from the George Washington University Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University.

NEXT: New Hires at MainStay 

John Lloyd has joined MainStay Investments, a New York Life company, as managing director and head of the research platform group in institutional intermediary business.

Lloyd has a long history of success in managing business lines that focus on portfolio construction, manager research, due diligence, risk analytics and product development. He was most recently with Credit Suisse Securities as a managing director and head of portfolio solutions and investment consulting solutions for Credit Suisse Private Bank. While there, his leadership and strategies directly led to tripling the total managed accounts and portfolio model platform assets by enhancing the investment platform and revamping the due diligence process and marketing materials.

Lloyd also led expansion and growth of the institutional consulting and outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) businesses, substantially increasing assets under management. He chaired both the Private Banking Investment Products Committee and Tactical Global Allocation Committee, which represented the last approval step for all investment strategies and the global investment models, respectively. Before Credit Suisse, Lloyd held positions at Merrill Lynch, Reuters Analytics Group and Dean Witter Discover.

Jonathan Blaze has also joined the institutional intermediary business’s defined contribution investment only (DCIO) practice to lead the wholesaling specialist effort nationwide, as well as to cover the central region out of Chicago.

Blaze, who has more than 30 years of experience in retirement and investments, was previously at Thornburg, where he built and grew its DCIO business into one of the largest and most respected in the industry, MainStay says. While there, he was responsible for sales in more than a dozen states in the central region. Blaze is a frequent speaker and thought leader in the ERISA retirement plan market, and is well versed in fiduciary best practices. He has also held positions at Great-West Retirement Services, Global Asset Management and Scudder Kemper Investments, Inc.

Brendan Gundersen, managing director and head of MainStay’s Institutional Intermediary Business, cites Lloyd and Blaze for their breadth of knowledge and expertise.

The Retirement Advantage Inc. (TRA) has acquired Capital Pension Services Inc. (CPSI), a third-party administrator (TPA) in Woodbridge, Virginia.  

Matt Schoneman, president of TRA, says Capital Pension Services will combine well with his firm’s operations. The deal brings another 400 clients to TRA and 12 new staffers to further the firm’s “corporate strategy of accelerated growth.”

TRA also will target marketing opportunities in the mid-Atlantic region, Schoneman says.

Deirdre Legge has joined GW&K Investment Management (GW&K) as vice president, relationship management.

Legg, who is based in the firm’s Boston headquarters, will focus on the development of a more formal institutional client service infrastructure for GW&K, an investment manager that provides active equity and fixed-income investment solutions.

Thomas F.X. Powers, partner and co-president of GW&K, cites Legge’s substantial experience as a complement to the institutional team.

Legge has nearly 20 years of experience at Putnam Investments, where she held a variety of positions, including vice president, client service manager on the institutional management team. More recently, she was a senior client service liaison at Wells Financial Partners, where she managed client relationships and developed the firm’s client service model. 

Legge holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, as well as FINRA Series 6 and 63 licenses. 

NEXT: Aon Hewitt adds to investment consulting team

Aon Hewitt announced that Meredith Jones has joined the firm as a partner and head of emerging  manager research, with the goal of further strengthening the capabilities of the firm's Global Asset Engine (GAE).

Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting, Inc.’s GAE “drives innovation, manager research and implementation of key investment ideas for clients,” the firm explains. In her new role, Jones is responsible for providing strategic guidance on emerging managers, hedge funds, private equity and real estate to the firm’s largest clients including foundation, endowment and public-sector clients.

The firm further suggests Jones’ research on emerging managers, "including small and young funds as well as women and minority-run funds, has been an industry standard since 2006.” Most recently, Jones served as director of the Rothstein Kass Institute, where she was responsible for developing research on hedge funds, women in alternative investments, private equity, venture capital and a number of other topics.