Deals and People August 19, 2024

Retirement Industry People Moves

Mercer promotes Ben Kibbe to lead West region; The Standard hires Daniel Kretz as retirement plans VP for Maryland and D.C.; World Investment Advisors hires CFO; and more.

Reported by

Mercer Promotes Ben Kibbe to U.S. West Zone Leader 

Ben Kibbe

Mercer, a business of Marsh McLennan, has promoted Ben Kibbe to be U.S. West Zone leader, based in San Francisco while maintaining a role as Mercer’s Northern California market leader.

Kibbe will report to Mercer’s U.S. and Canada Region President Susan Potter and will oversee commercial business in the region, including offices in the Pacific Northwest, Southern California and the mountain states.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANSPONSOR newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan benefits news.

“Ben joined Mercer nearly a decade ago and since then has done a terrific job working with clients in Northern California,” said Potter in a statement. “His experience at Mercer, pedigree in HR consulting and deep industry expertise in high tech, as well as healthcare, retail and insurance, make him the ideal leader for this region.” 

Kibbe joined Mercer in 2015. Before that, he worked in client engagement for the Western U.S. at Willis Towers Watson.

The Standard Hires Daniel Kretz as Regional Retirement Plan VP

Daniel Kretz

The Standard has hired Daniel Kretz as a regional vice president in retirement plans to collaborate with advisers, plan sponsors and third-party administrators in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Kretz brings 21 years of experience in the retirement plan and financial services industry, most recently with Voya Financial as a regional sales vice president; he has held previous roles in sales and business development as a senior benefit plan consultant, director and regional vice president.

“Dan is a proven sales leader with deep relationships in his territory,” said Derek Fuller, divisional vice president of retirement plan sales at The Standard, in a statement.

World Investment Advisors Names Kevin Ryan CFO

Ryan Kelly

World Investment Advisors, a division of World Insurance Associates LLC formerly known as Pensionmark, named Kevin Ryan as chief financial officer.

Ryan will oversee financial management and partner with its businesses to manage capital allocation, support growth initiatives and manage and mitigate risk. He will report to World Investment CEO Troy Hammond and be a member of the firm’s executive team. He is replacing Diana Pereira, who had been in the role for more than two years.

He becomes CFO of a firm supporting more than $55 billion in assets across institutional and wealth management segments. In the last two years, the wealth management division has grown from $1 billion in assets under management to $11.5 billion.

Ryan joins from Xactus, a verification firm for the mortgage industry. He has 24 years of experience in financial management, including a background in mergers and acquisitions, and will help “support World Investment Advisors’ aggressive organic and acquisition growth goals.”

Vontobel Hires Johnson to Lead RIA Sales

Elizabeth Johnson

Investment manager Vontobel has named Elizabeth Johnson as executive director of national RIA sales to work with the firm’s direct distribution to registered investment advisers.

Johnson has been working with investment advisers and managers for more than 25 years in the Western region of the United States, including most recently with Hartford Funds and, before that, with Morgan Stanley and Eaton Vance.

Johnson will “focus on building and strengthening relationships with clients and advancing Vontobel’s distribution of various investment offerings, including mutual funds and SMAs, to the RIA market,” according to the announcement.

Products August 16, 2024

JP Morgan Announces Lifetime Income TDF

The asset manager adds to the roster of large financial firms targeting the market for pension-like retirement savings in DC plans.

Reported by

J.P. Morgan Asset Management announced on Thursday a retirement income investment leveraging a target-date fund with a guaranteed annuity payout in retirement.

The firm’s SmartRetirement Lifetime Income TDF is designed to provide a stream of income payments in retirement through annuities from participating insurance companies, according to the announcement.

Get more!  Sign up for PLANSPONSOR newsletters.

Equitable and Prudential are expected insurers for the product, which will be supported by multiple insurers and use “familiar target-date funds and then transition to a personalized retirement income strategy,” according to the announcement. The firm is in “active dialogues” with potential plan sponsors but has none signed up currently for the product, according to a spokesperson.

J.P. Morgan’s entrance into the in-plan annuity market via a TDF marks another major financial firm targeting the market for a pension-like setup for defined contribution retirement plans. Other firms with annuity-backed products in the market range from insurer AllianceBernstein LP to asset managers BlackRock Inc. and State Street Global Advisors and TIAA’s Nuveen Investments.

J.P. Morgan has built its SmartRetirement Lifetime Income to “minimize recordkeeper requirements,” according to the spokesperson.

“Retirement savers want a solution that turns complexity into clarity, allowing them to have the certainty of a source of income they cannot outlive, without giving up control of their savings,” said Steve Rubino, head of retirement for J.P. Morgan Asset Management, in a statement.

According to J.P. Morgan’s announcement, the lifetime income feature would allow electing participants to draw down a stable value balance over an expected time horizon that correlates with their average life expectancy, with annuity income coming directly from the supporting insurers.

The investment product will leverage retirement using data inputs that include J.P. Morgan’s proprietary participant savings data and J.P. Morgan Chase’s spending data across 66 million U.S. households, the firm noted.

Making such investment products available as the qualified default investment alternative in DC plans has been a regular part of the retirement conversation as a way to embed a protected income source for participants.

Rob Massa, a plan adviser and the managing director and Houston market retirement practice leader for Prime Capital Retirement, says benchmarking the various products currently in market is one of the challenges in assessing the option, as “there isn’t a lot of data to work with.”

When talking with plan sponsors about these options, Massa says he focuses on education components such as what retirement income is as compared with lifetime income, the pros and cons of offering income options and fiduciary considerations, among others.

“It’s a daunting agenda, really,” says Massa. “Yet, this is what you need to cover just to educate your plan fiduciaries enough to be able to have an informed conversation about in-plan income solutions.”

In terms of reviewing the product offerings, Massa says he uses some of Morningstar’s requirements, as well as in-plan income certification program guidelines laid out by the National Association of Plan Advisors. He then integrates those into a “more standard fiduciary processes we might use when conducting” a TDF request for proposal.

Assessment of offering such a product for a plan sponsor should consider factors including the participant pool demographics, risks or problems the solution is trying to solve for, and a cost-benefit analysis to compare the solutions versus other, more traditional options, Massa says.

SmartRetirement Lifetime Income was designed by the team that oversees the firm’s SmartRetirement Target Date Funds, including Daniel Oldroyd and Daniel Yem, both portfolio managers in the target-date and retirement income fields, according to the announcement.

«