Edmund F. Murphy III was named president of the retirement business of Great-West Financial.
The unit holds the recently combined retirement businesses of Great-West and Putnam Investments as well as newly acquired record-keeper J.P. Morgan Retirement Plan Services, a former unit of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. The J.P. Morgan transaction closed Sept. 2.
Mr. Murphy, who had been head of defined contribution at Putnam Investments, will report to Robert Reynolds, president and CEO of Great-West Financial.
The merger and acquisition activity by Great-West this year — to form Great-West Retirement Services — has a created a defined contribution service provider with $415.5 billion in assets under administration, serving 6.97 million participants as of Aug. 31, according to Great-West.
That places Great-West in second place in both DC record-keeping assets and in number of DC participants, behind Fidelity Investments, according to Pensions & Investments data.
Messrs. Murphy and Reynolds said in a joint interview that combining the record-keeping units that serve small, midsize and large corporate retirement plans as well as those serving 403(b) and government plans would create synergies among the various constituent clients without ignoring their special needs.
“Our approach is based on a segmentation approach because we realize that customers have a unique set of needs,” Mr. Murphy said. But the clients also will benefit from being on the same record-keeping platform and having a centralized phone system.
Mr. Murphy said the complete integration of the three DC provider units is being phased in over 24 months.
Mr. Reynolds said he has been meeting directly since April with clients who had been served by the different providers prior to the merger and acquisition. Mr. Murphy will start conducting in-person meetings with clients in the coming weeks.
“We want to explain the experience in person,” said Mr. Reynolds. “We are telling them that the team that they worked with (before the merger and acquisition) will remain in place.”
