Creative Planning, the Overland Park, Kan.-based registered investment advisor with more than $370 billion in client assets, has acquired SageView Advisory Group, with plans for the deal to close in December.
The deal, previously reported by WealthManagement.com, will further solidify Creative Planning as one of the country’s largest RIAs with deep tentacles across wealth and retirement plan assets. SageView’s private equity owner, Aquiline Partners, will exit through the deal, the terms of which the firms did not disclose.
“We’ve obviously admired and paid attention to SageView for quite some time,” said Peter Mallouk, founder and CEO of Creative Planning. “We thought that together, we would be much, much stronger. This was an imperative time and an imperative deal for us—it was the perfect moment.”
SageView was one of the original retirement plan advisor aggregators, alongside Captrust and what is now Hub. Captrust is the largest by total assets, with over $1 trillion across retirement and wealth.
Like those other firms, SageView has been actively working to add wealth management capabilities alongside its retirement business. Now, Creative Planning can sync its retirement footprint to its large wealth practice.
“In the retirement space, you’re seeing more and more companies demand participant education, financial wellness, executive planning and so I think that bridge is almost constructing itself partially,” Mallouk said. “But I think the issue is that most firms are deficient on one side or the other, and to really have that be a strong bridge where people want to go to both ends, both of the cities have to be beautiful cities to attract people. … I think we’re going to be in a position to be able to execute on that.”
Rob Madore, a vice president of investment bank and consultancy MarshBery, said that defined contribution and retirement plans offer low margins, but that SageView has “spent considerable resources on the crossover between retirement and wealth” since its investment from Aquiline.
“Outside of the participant channel, Creative has been top of the industry in building a platform that can surround business owners with the services they need,” he said. “SageView’s retirement footprint brings significant reach directly into senior management and ownership of those businesses.”
SageView was founded in 1989 by Randy Long, who now serves as chairman. In 2023, the firm hired John Longley, a former SVB Private president, to replace Long as CEO. It has been majority owned by private equity firm Aquiline since early 2021, with Citywire.com reporting in May that the firm was exploring a sale of the retirement plan-focused RIA.
Creative Planning has also built up its retirement plan business. It bought IRON Financial’s retirement division, Lockton’s $110 billion retirement plan business and Mesirow’s corporate retirement advisory services business. That now encompasses over $210 billion in assets under management and advisement, with more than 6,000 plans, according to Creative Planning’s website.
Mallouk said that, even though Creative Planning is already one of the largest players in the retirement space, the addition of SageView was important to solidify it in a sector where the retirement plan record keepers that house the participants are “only willing to work at a very high and connected level with only a few firms.”
“Our thesis in the retirement space is that you’re going to end up with just a few players,” Mallouk said. “Those few firms are going to have to have tremendous specialization and expertise, they’re going to have to have negotiating power, access to the best investments, they have to be innovative, they have to have workplace solutions, and they’ve got have scale.”
The announcement of another mega-merger in the RIA space comes a few months after Cleveland-based MAI Capital Management announced it was acquiring the Los Angeles-based RIA Evoke Advisors, nearly doubling its size to about $60 billion in assets. It also comes after a $129 billion Merrill Lynch breakaway working across institutional and wealth assets, launched as an independent RIA backed by Dynasty Financial Partners. That firm’s leader, Eric Bjerke, also stressed the importance of working across wealth and institutional assets.
MarshBerry’s Madore said that the “bridge” between retirement participants and wealth management has been “the holy grail for years,” but hasn’t been proven out by any players yet.
“Record keepers like Empower still could be argued to have the upper hand,” he said. “Already possessing the end-user portal, access to data, and a more scaled operating model (since the acquisition of Personal Capital).”
Creative Planning, in the meantime, will run its wealth and institutional practices under the banner of one integrated firm and brand as it seeks to serve clients across retirement and individual wealth management, according to Mallouk.
“I think to really lead, you’re not going to be able to be partially competitive in one of these spaces,” Mallouk said. “You’re going to have to be all in on both of them, and we’re committed to being all in on both of them, and I think this is the proof.”
