Ascensus, a tax-advantaged retirement and education savings provider, has added a role to bolster connections between wealth and asset managers and its 16 million account holders and roughly $862 billion in assets under administration.
Ascensus has hired Josh Rundle from Transamerica to head up investment and wealth solutions. Rundle will start later this month and report to Ascensus CEO David Musto.
In his new role, Rundle will “partner with Ascensus leaders and our major distribution partners to help facilitate new capabilities and programs” related to financial advice and wealth management in and out of workplace retirement plans.
“Many savers will only access financial advice and support through the workplace,” Musto said. “As you think about the advisor firms, RIAs, independents, broker/dealers, there’s a real focus and interest in better delivering advice and guidance capabilities into the workplace, and also helping savers translate those best practices … have that extend out into the out-of-workplace experience.”
But getting access to and working with workplaces can have obstacles, Musto said, which is why there was a need for the new role.
“Our intention with Josh joining the firm is to remove more of those obstacles, to work more closely with our investment management and wealth management partners, and to be able to add more value to the savers we serve,” he said.
Dresher, Pa.-based Ascensus is majority-owned by private equity firm Stone Point Capital and the private equity team of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. It is also in the playing field with industry behemoths such as Fidelity Investments and Empower, which oversee over $16.4 trillion in assets and $1.8 trillion, respectively.
However, the smaller provider sees an “outsized” chance to work with advisors and asset managers partly through its independent model, as it does not have competing divisions in those sectors.
“As the market continues to evolve, we see clearly that there is more of an opportunity to better curate the investment solutions that we’re delivering into the workplace, both individual solutions as well as those that are geared toward more personalization,” Musto said, referencing managed accounts and more “institutional quality” investment options.
Players on both the recordkeeping and wealth management sides of financial services are seeking ways to connect the trillions of dollars in retirement plans to more lucrative financial advisor services and wealth management.
“Like almost all record keepers other than fintechs and payroll, Ascensus either has to monetize participants or help advisors and partners do it,” said Fred Barstein, CEO and founder of The Retirement Adviser and Plan Sponsor Universities, 401kTV, and editorial contributor to WealthManagement.com.
Barstein said the record keeper market is mainly divided between those looking to work directly with participants, such as Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard, and those working through advisors such as Ascensus, John Hancock (Manulife) and T. Rowe Price, with the exception of Empower, which is “trying to do both.”
Musto sees Ascensus’ independence—it does not have asset or wealth management divisions—as a differentiator from other record keepers, whose services he said have become “commoditized.”
“The true value is being able to manage an ecosystem, or in our case, a technology and servicing platform that is able to connect more of the important deliverers of service in the marketplace, such as the asset managers and wealth managers, and the consumers of those services,” he said. “We sit at the center of that ecosystem and activity.”
Rundle had been with Transamerica for over 17 years in roles across wealth management, insurance and retirement. His final post was as head of retirement solutions, but he’d also held roles working to create co-manufactured investment products to be offered to participants in retirement plans.
Ascensus hopes that experience will help him discuss and explain the “proliferation of different” savings solutions available to people, according to Musto.
“Each one of those solutions has merit and in and of itself, can deliver benefits, but in combination, it’s incredibly confusing to individuals trying to lead their financial lives and decide where and when to be thinking about their variety of needs and opportunities,” he said. “This is why we believe financial advisors earn their keep all day and all night in terms of the services that they provide.”
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