What happens when a mega-RIA loses its highly influential founder and namesake in the middle of a pandemic?
For $241 billion AUM Edelman Financial Engines, it’s meant continuing to evolve as a firm that combines professional fiduciary financial planning with technology to deliver advice relevant for any kind of consumer.
After handing off his leadership roles, Edelman stepped back from his chairman of financial education and client experience position at the firm in the summer of 2021. While he still remains active as a board member, a strategic advisor and as Edelman Financial Engines’ largest individual shareholder, most of the strategy and operations of the firm now fall under the supervision of Executive Vice President and Head of Wealth Planning and Marketing Jason Van de Loo, who is a member of CEO Larry Raffone’s leadership team.
Van de Loo worked his way into his position after serving as a marketing executive with Financial Engines, a workplace retirement business that merged with Edelman Financial Services in 2018. At that time, Financial Engines had 1.1 million workplace retirement clients, many of them working at the 122 Fortune 500 companies it boasted as clients. Following the merger, he was named Chief Marketing Officer before adding wealth management to his plate in 2020.
“We’re at an interesting point in our evolution as a firm,” said Van de Loo. “Part of that is Ric’s transition as he heads to the next chapter of his career. We’ve come through two years of integration, and any time you integrate firms as large and successful as Edelman and Financial Engines, that’s hard work. Now we’ve had a chance to reset, take a break and reconsider our focus.”
The now combined firm has a total of 1.3 million clients, including 95,000 individual and household investor clients served comprehensive financial planning services by a team of 340+ advisors from over 140 offices around the country.
In other words, it's not the easiest ship to steer.
Van de Loo has developed the following three-part vision for Edelman Financial Engines that he says is designed to modernize the brand, deepen its value proposition and develop the next generation of talent.
Modernization
The legacy Edelman Financial Services business was built from the ground up almost exclusively through organic growth via 30 years of AM radio programs and face-to-face seminars, said Van de Loo. Covid-19 forced the firm to change directions and think differently about how it attracts clients. [Note: “Everyday Wealth” launched in January 2022, to replace the company’s former radio program “The Ric Edelman Show.”]
The workplace business is a potential goldmine of financial planning clients that Van de Loo wants to tap. He imagines Edelman Financial Engines becoming a brand that can help people from their very first job when they first enroll in a 401(k) all the way through retirement when they need retirement income, estate and tax planning questions answered.