Great-West Unit Closes on MassMutual's Retirement Plan Business
About 1,700 MassMutual employees will become Empower Retirement employees.
Great-West Lifeco Inc.’s Empower Retirement unit is expanding its retirement plan business in the United States.
The firm announced Monday that it has completed a previously announced acquisition of a large retirement plan business from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.
The deal involved a $2.35 billion ceding commission, and Empower Retirement said it will be supporting the retirement plan business with $1 billion required capital.
(Related: 5 Ideas About the Great-West-MassMutual Deal, for Annuity Sellers)
The companies said when they announced the deal, in September, that they expected to complete it by Dec. 31, 2020, after getting regulatory approvals.
The companies now have received the necessary approvals, Empower Retirement said.
MassMutual is based in Springfield, Massachusetts. Empower Retirement is based in Denver, and its parent, Great-West Lifeco, is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Before MassMutual completed the deal, it had relationships with about 26,000 workplace retirement savings plans, with 2.5 million participants and $167 billion in assets.
The MassMutual retirement plan business had 2,000 employees.
Empower Retirement came to the deal with relationships with 40,000 workplace retirement savings plans, with 9.7 million participants and $667 billion in assets.
After the Closing
About 1,700 MassMutual retirement plan business employees will become Empower Retirement employees, the latter said.
Empower Retirement CEO Edmund Murphy III said in a statement that the company looks forward to helping end-users create a secure retirement.
The company will work to provide “a personalized, holistic approach to retirement planning,” Murphy said.
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