Cetera to buy Voya Financial Advisors' broker-dealer reps and assets

Industry consolidation among independent broker-dealers continues with Cetera Financial Group announcing on Monday morning it had agreed to buy the brokerage and advisory assets of Voya Financial Advisors.

Many have been expecting a sale of Voya Financial Advisors, with about 900 advisers and $40 billion in client assets, for at least the past year. Large, private equity-backed networks like Cetera and Advisor Group have been eager to expand.

And at the end of 2019, the broker-dealer's parent, Voya Financial Inc., said it was selling its individual life insurance business, two years after it said it was selling its annuities businesses. Such company-wide evaluations can lead to the sale of broker-dealer businesses.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In a press release, Cetera and Voya characterized the deal as an "agreement to acquire certain assets related to the independent financial planning channel of Voya Financial Advisors." Genstar Capital is the private equity owner of Cetera Financial Group, a network of five broker-dealers and 8,000 reps and advisers.

Insurance companies 20 years ago swarmed to control independent broker-dealers, seeing them as avenues to sell high-commission products like variable annuities. But since the credit crisis of 2008 and drastically lower interest rates, insurance companies have been selling off their retail brokerage assets.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the number of advisers at Voya Financial as 1,700. The firm has 900 financial advisers.