WealthTech on Deck Personalization, Scaling Efficiently, and Serving the Underserved with Ed Murphy
In this episode, Jack Sharry talks with Ed Murphy, CEO of Empower Retirement. Empower is the second-largest retirement plan recordkeeper with more than one trillion dollars in assets for more than 12.5 million Americans.
The chaos of 2020 has launched more people into retirement than ever before. In fact, a recent study suggests that four times as many people retired in 2020 versus 2019. To stay agile, advisors must adapt to an ever-changing demographic with ever-changing preferences. And no one knows that better than Ed Murphy.
As it’s grown and rebranded, Empower has made several smart acquisitions including the acquisition of Personal Capital just last year. Ed walks us through the reasoning behind several of these recent acquisitions, the void in the market that Empower aims to fill, and how he’s navigating a world that’s increasingly retirement-ready.
A believer in the need for personalization and a hybrid human-technology approach, Ed discusses Empower’s holistic approach to advising, his emphasis on wellness, and the importance of scaling efficiently.
“There're 128 million mass affluent households and many of those households are underserved today. Oftentimes RIAs and the big broker-dealers are typically focusing on much larger balances. And yet those customers have real needs, whether it’s retirement, college savings, or emergency savings. And so I think there is a void there.” ~ @EFMurphyIII
Main takeaways
- While clients engage with their retirement accounts online more frequently than ever before, they still want the option for human advisory.
- No matter how large a company grows, it’s important to remain focused on the customer.
- To navigate increasing regulatory challenges and fee pressures, it’s important to scale using a price-advantage approach. Using scale as a cost-advantage is necessary for quick growth.
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