Higginbotham and Two West: buying the platform, not the book

Higginbotham, the Fort Worth employee-owned insurance and financial services company, said Aug. 27 it had joined forces with Two West Capital Advisors, a Kansas City firm founded in 2010. The deal keeps Two West's full team, experience and operating platform intact under Higginbotham's retirement planning and wealth management division, according to 401(k) Specialist.

Two West serves both employers and individual investors, with a stated focus on small and middle-market employers that CEO Marko Ungashick said had been left with generalists while the largest clients collected the specialized expertise. The firm was built, he told 401(k) Specialist, to bring deeper retirement plan guidance and fiduciary responsibility to businesses like the one he grew up in.

Higginbotham Chairman and CEO Rusty Reid said the combination immediately takes the firm's retirement planning and wealth management capabilities to another level, and that Two West's business philosophy and ideals of service fit naturally with Higginbotham's. The breakthrough, Ungashick said, came from Higginbotham's willingness to listen first to the team, the systems and the platform Two West had built, and to see how the two firms could grow it together.

Two West will remain based in Kansas City and continue serving its existing clients, with all current teammates on board and new ones arriving as the firm actively recruits for expected growth. Its employees gain Higginbotham's HR, marketing, legal and compliance infrastructure and become employee-owners in the larger organization, turning an aggregation into a culture play: the seller's team is made partners in the buyer's future rather than absorbed units.

The deal is a concrete instance of what this publication has argued is the current shape of retirement M&A: the business moving past recordkeepers into the features that answer the squeeze. Managed accounts are posting a measurable contribution lift and debt now outranks saving as a household priority, so buyers have been paying for those features rather than the recordkeeping contract alone. Two West's fiduciary, middle-market, specialty platform is that kind of feature, and keeping it intact and staffed suggests Higginbotham is paying for the capability more than the accounts.

PCS Retirement, an independent retirement plan solutions provider, announced that Anthony Bologna has been appointed head of ERISA sales and Julianne Donatelli has moved to head of ERISA strategic accounts. Bologna will report to CEO Scott David and set direction for the company's field sales organization, overseeing its regional vice presidents, according to 401(k) Specialist; PCS said the changes put dedicated leadership over two key areas of its growth strategy.

PCS's split of its ERISA sales function into field and strategic accounts lands next to Higginbotham's purchase of a Two West platform it intends to grow rather than fold. Both bets rest on specialized expertise as the durable asset in retirement advisory: Higginbotham's answer to retention is employee ownership, giving the Two West team a direct stake in the larger firm, while PCS's is a second leadership seat with a clear reporting line. The people and the platform, not the AUM total, are the asset; the next round of retirement M&A is likely to price books of business as the opening bid rather than the final one.