Cetera Financial Group is acquiring Concourse Financial Group Securities, the dual registered broker/dealer and RIA arms of Protective Life Corp. The deal will gain Cetera approximately 350 financial professionals, more than $12 billion in assets under administration and $4 billion in assets under management.
Cetera Holdings CEO Mike Durbin said the acquisition of Birmingham, Ala.-based Concourse Financial. represented “a tremendous opportunity” in a consolidating market and fits into Cetera's history of acquiring and integrating IBDs originally associated with insurance companies.
“This transaction will enable us to strategically connect the CFGS team within the existing Cetera Wealth Partners community while increasing Cetera's scale and creating new growth opportunities for CFGS advisors,” said Durbin.
According to Aaron Seurkamp, senior vice president and president of Protective's Protection and Retirement Division, the acquisition allows his company to focus on its “core competencies” in the life insurance and retirement businesses. He said Protective made the deal based on Cetera's previous acquisitions of similar companies.
Dentons LLP served as legal advisor to Cetera, while Maynard Nexsen and Eversheds Sutherland were legal advisors to Protective and Concourse (Morgan Stanley served as financial advisor to the latter on the deal). The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.
The acquisition of Concourse is Cetera's latest acquisition of the assets of an insurance company's brokerage and advisory businesses.
In 2019, Cetera acquired the assets of Foresters Financialbringing about 500 advisors to the firm (in doing so, the firm created Cetera Investors, a separate self-clearing eb/d division of the company). In 2021, Cetera agreed to buy the assets within Voya Financial's independent financial planning channel, bringing in over $37 billion in client assets and 900 independent financial professionals.
Last year, the firm acquired Securian Financial Group's retail wealth business, bringing in about $50 billion in assets, according to Cetera. Securian would distribute its individual life and retirement products through professionals affiliated with Cetera. In 2012, Cetera acquired Genworth Financial Investment Services, b/d for Genworth Life Insurance Company. in 2013, MetLife sold its IBDs Walnut Street Securities and Tower Square Securities in Cetera.
Cetera includes 12,000 financial professionals and their teams, with more than $521 billion in AUA and $224 billion in AUM at the end of June. In 2018, private equity firm Genstar took a majority stake in the company and fresh capital reinvested in the company in 2023, remaining the majority shareholder.
However, there have been changes at the executive level in several Cetera divisions in recent months; in August, Todd MacKaythe former president of tax-focused wealth firm Avantax, which Cetera acquired last year, became president of Cetera Solutions, responsible for growth across lines of business within the broader firm.
Meanwhile, Tom Taylor He recently announced that he would step down as Cetera Financial Group's head of sales and growth by the end of the year. He had been with the firm for nearly 30 years and the company is currently looking for his replacement.