Most retirement plan advisory practices offer multiple services to their corporate or individual clients — either because of their roots or to leverage low-hanging opportunities. While some firms have focused on geographic expansion of a single service, like SageView, other regional firms like Bukaty have taken the opposite approach, expanding benefits and financial services locally.
So is Bukaty an example of the future, where one firm offers clients all benefits and risk-management services while helping employees manage their money, or an anomaly that will be hard to replicate?
Vince Morris, president of Bukaty’s retirement and financial services division, says that their firm was started in 1992 as a traditional health and welfare group by Mike Bukaty — expanding into COBRA, FSAs and now HSAs. Morris joined the firm in 2001 and now manages more than $2 billion in DC assets and nearly $500 million in wealth management. P&C services were added in 2003, with payroll and HR consulting the final piece in Bukaty’s version of the “Four Corner” practice. The entire firm has 150 employees based in Leawood, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City; an astounding 40-50% of Bukaty’s corporate clients use all of their services.
So what does it take to replicate Bukaty’s model? First, it takes a business person, not a technically adept sales person, to build a Four Corner practice. Secondly, it takes time, as evidenced by Bukaty’s 20-plus year history — or capital, which can collapse time. Finally, it takes a team; though each practice is run by its own president, Mike Bukaty is the majority owner of all five divisions. There’s a group of shared services that includes IT, HR, finance and marketing, as well as a participant call center.
Bukaty, which clears through LPL but owns their own RIA, is looking to recruit offices around the country that can maintain their own brand and remain independent, but hook into overall as well as retirement and financial shared services.
The consensus on the street is that to be a player in the DC market you have to either join or start a team. There is no lack of so-called aggregators, including CAPTRUST, SageView, NFP, Sheridan Road, RBG, Pensionmark, Centurion and the newly formed, Chetney-led GRP, as well as Lockton and Gallagher. At the same time, smaller regional advisors like Jania Stout at HighTower and 401kAdvisor’s Paul Powell are recruiting too. It seems that as with DC record keepers, you have to go big or go small to be in an advisors’ version of 401(k) Heaven.
