Kevin Jestice. Credit: Nationwide
Nationwide Financial has picked Kevin Jestice — the head of its Investment Management Group unit — to be the next leader of its Nationwide Retirement Solutions business.
Nationwide Retirement Solutions administers 32,000 retirement plans with $200 billion in participant assets and 2.7 million participants.
Eric Stevenson, who is retiring, has been running the retirement solutions business since 2019.
Jestice has been overseeing a Nationwide investment advisory team with about $77 billion in assets under management.
Craig Hawley, the president of Nationwide Financial, said the company named Jestice to succeed Stevenson because of his experience with retirement plan operations as well as his experience with investment and asset management.
What it means: If Congress does find a way to create a Secure 3.0 retirement services package this year, Jestice may be in some of the rooms where that happens.
Kevin Jestice: Jestice started out in financial services as a consultant working with defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans.
He moved to Vanguard as a senior investment consultant for the institutional advisory services business in 2007, at the start of the Great Financial Crisis. He helped maneuver the business through the crisis and stayed with the company for 13 years. When he left, in 2020, he was head of enterprise advice, a unit that provided investment advice to individual investors.
At Nationwide, he started as vice president for internal sales and service.
When he became head of the Investment Management Group, in 2023, he also became the president and chief executive officer of the Nationwide Funds business.
Jestice has a bachelor's degree from Loras College and a master's degree in business from Wharton. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst professional designation.
Eric Stevenson: Stevenson, who began working for Nationwide in 2006, led the company's retirement business through years when low interest rates hit annuity issuers hard and through the turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
His testimony at congressional hearings helped lead to passage of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act.
He is also the immediate past chair of the University of Oklahoma board of regents.
Kevin Jestice. Courtesy photo
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