Ten years ago, the annual Pensions & Investments survey of record keepers featured 56 companies with names such as Wells Fargo & Co., Mercer, Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., New York Life Investment Management LLC and BMO Retirement Services.
Their record-keeping businesses are gone — along with many others — swallowed up by competitors and/or sold or spun off by corporate parents for which record keeping was no longer a strategic asset.
In the latest survey, 30 record keepers provided information for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2021. Defined contribution consultants predict there will be more consolidation among the larger players.
One transaction, which closed April 4, was Empower Retirement's acquisition of Prudential Financial Inc.'s record-keeping business. The deal, was announced in July 2021, so the P&I chart data still reflect individual results for the two businesses.
Using Sept. 30 data, the transaction means that Empower remains in second place for assets under administration, rising from $1.05 trillion before the acquisition to about $1.33 trillion post-acquisition. With AUA of $283.2 billion as of Sept. 30, Prudential had ranked ninth among record keepers providing data to P&I.
Even with the Prudential deal, Empower remained behind first-place Fidelity Investments' $1.37 trillion in AUA but comfortably ahead of third-place TIAA-CREF's $710.2 billion.
Empower has acquired several record-keeping businesses in recent years — MassMutual, Fifth Third Bank and part of Truist Bank's record-keeping operation.
Because P&I relies on voluntary responses, some companies aren't represented in the survey. Two record keepers — Ascensus LLC and Newport Group Inc. — haven't participated in several years. They will have an impact on the industry because they announced a merger in November 2021 with David Musto, Ascensus president and CEO, taking the CEO's job in the combined company.
An April 8 Ascensus news release, which announced the deal's closing, said the combined companies had more than $745 billion in assets under administration as of Dec. 31. The news release didn't specify the size of the combined companies' record-keeping business, and a spokesman didn't provide details.
