Benefits industry newsmakers: Ease, EIS, Human Interest, Innovest Portfolio Solutions, and more

Spring of 2020 brought some good news for companies and individuals, including promotions, awards, partnerships and mergers. Here’s a sample of what we’ve seen of late.

Transamerica announced several appointments:

• Blake Bostwick was appointed Chief Executive Officer of its Individual Solutions division. Mr. Bostwick will also lead the organization’s retail affiliates that distribute life insurance, long term care, annuities and funds. In his new role, Mr. Bostwick continues reporting to Mark Mullin, Transamerica President and CEO, and heads the existing leadership team within the Individual Solutions division.
• Kent Callahan was appointed Chief Executive Officer of its Workplace Solutions division. Mr. Callahan has more than three decades of experience with Transamerica, and previously ledTransamerica business lines in retirement, employee benefits and investment solutions. In his new role, Mr. Callahan reports to Mark Mullin, Transamerica President and CEO.

Randstad USA announced a partnership with health care staffing firm AMN Healthcare. The first highly visible implementation of this partnership is the Open Talent Marketplace for Healthcare, designed to provide state coalitions, federal agencies and hospital systems with rapid access to hundreds of staffing vendors and tens of thousands of clinicians, health IT professionals, office personnel and other talent. Developed as a resource hospitals could use to surge staff in light of COVID-19, the concept also is tailored to the post-COVID environment.

Former Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi has been awarded the Plan Sponsor Council of America’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for 2020. From 2009 to 2017 Ms. Borzi was head of the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) where she led the organization responsible for the regulation of approximately 700,000 employer-sponsored retirement plans in the private-sector as well approximately 2.3 million health plans, and other plans providing benefits to approximately 150 million Americans from 2009 through 2017. From 1979 to 1995, she served the House Education and Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations as pension and employee benefit counsel and later served on the advisory board of the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER).  Borzi went on to serve as a research professor in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University Medical Center’s School of Public Health, and was later of counsel with the Washington, D.C. law firm O’Donoghue & O’Donoghue LLP.

New York Life announced the appointment of Natalie Lamarque as the company’s General Counsel. In this role, Ms. Lamarque will have day-to-day oversight of the Office of the General Counsel which includes the insurance and agency, investments, corporate practice, and tax teams. Ms. Lamarque will also join New York Life’s Executive Management Committee and continues to report to Chief Legal Officer Sheila Davidson.

Newport Group announced it has entered into an agreement with Huntington National Bank to assume its retirement recordkeeping and administration business. Huntington will continue to serve as plan advisor for its retirement plan services clients.Upon closing, and subject to customary conditions, the business—which currently provides recordkeeping and administration services to more than 600 plans with approximately $1.7 billion of assets under administration—will operate as part of Newport. The transaction includes Huntington’s third-party administration (TPA) business, and a team of Huntington employees, who provide these services, will join Newport.

Legal & General announced that it has simultaneously agreed two pension risk transfer transactions with IHS Markit – one in the UK and another in the US. The pension schemes covered are IHS (Global) Ltd. Pension and Life Assurance Scheme in the UK and IHS Retirement Income Plan in the US.The UK transaction was for £37.8m ($46.7m), covering around 150 members, and the US transaction was for $97.2m (£78.4m), covering around 1,200 members. Willis Towers Watson led the advice on both transactions, with Sackers and Blake Morgan providing legal advice to the Trustees of the IHS (Global) Ltd. Pension and Life Assurance Scheme in the UK.

Innovest Portfolio Solutions has acquired California-based, Advisory Consulting Group, LLC. The transaction was effective April 2020 with the combined entity operating under the Innovest Portfolio Solutions (Innovest) name. ACG, a Registered Investment Advisor, was co-founded by Robert Stebbins in 2007 to provide fee-only retirement plan, ERISA, M&A and investment consulting services exclusively to retirement plan sponsors and currently advises retirement plans with assets totaling approximately $2.5 billion. Innovest was co-founded by Richard Todd (CEO) and Wendy Dominguez (President) in 1996 and is headquartered in Denver, CO; it was one of the first fee-only RIAs established in the western region and now serves retirement plans, endowments & foundations and wealthy families across the nation, with over $25 billion in assets under advisement.

Human Interest announced that it is upsizing its Series C financing to $50 million as it continues to focus on delivering retirement benefits. Advisory services are offered by Human Interest Advisors, a subsidiary of Human Interest Inc. The extension, led by Glynn Capital, comes just over a month after the company announced a $40 million Series C.The additional capital will help Human Interest double its engineering team by July 2020 in order to deepen the investment in technology.

EIS announced the appointment of insurance C-suite veteran Dr. Mark Boxer to the board of directors. Boxer is an internationally recognized innovator and technologist with more than twenty-five years of experience in healthcare technology, analytics, and digital leadership. He also is considered an expert in behavioral economics and using IoT devices to improve health and wellness.Boxer previously served as executive vice president, and global chief information and digital officer for Cigna.

Ease has partnered with Sun Life U.S. With this connection, Sun Life will become Ease’s latest EaseConnect+ partner, enabling brokers to submit enrollment data and changes directly from Ease to Sun Life.