Hub to buy $40 billion LPL branch Global Retirement Partners

The deal would make the insurance brokerage one of the largest retirement-focused aggregator firms

Insurance brokerage Hub International has reached an agreement to buy Global Retirement Partners, a $40.1 billion registered investment adviser that serves as LPL Financial’s largest retirement-focused branch.

Global Retirement Partners, headquartered in San Rafael, Calif., disclosed in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Hub would purchase GRP membership interests on or around Sept. 15.

InvestmentNews reported in July that the two firms were in talks over a potential deal.

GRP sent notices to 401(k) clients in the middle of August disclosing the sale, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

GRP’s senior management team — CEO Geoff White, chief operating officer Russell Frierson, and president and chief compliance officer Cosmo Gould — will remain in place after the sale, according to the RIA’s most recent Form ADV filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Neither Mr. White nor David Reich, Hub’s national president of retirement services, responded to a request for comment.

It is unclear how GRP’s relationship with broker-dealer LPL will change, if at all, as a result of the sale. Hub, which has emerged as one of the largest aggregators of retirement-focused advisory shops within the past few years, is broker-dealer agnostic and as such allows the firms it acquires to keep their current brokerage affiliations.

Hub had $23 billion in defined-contribution assets and 40 retirement plan advisers as of March 31, according to InvestmentNews data. An additional $40.1 billion would put Hub within the top five largest retirement-focused RIA aggregator firms.

GRP has 12 shareholders, according to its most recent Form ADV. Joseph DeNoyior, CEO of Washington Financial Group, is the largest shareholder.