Creative Planning to more than double AUM with SageView deal

The RIA giant Creative Planning is acquiring SageView Advisory Group in a deal set to bolster its expertise in retirement planning and more than double its assets under management.

Overland Park, Kansas-based Creative Planning announced Thursday that it was buying SageView, a Newport Beach, California-based firm managing roughly $250 billion in client assets and 36 offices. The acquisition will give Creative Planning nearly $640 billion in total assets, 550 advisors and roughly 80,000 clients in more than 90 countries. SageView specializes in helping clients retire, and the combined firm will manage roughly 11,800 retirement plans. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

“SageView has an outstanding reputation as a leader in the retirement plan consulting industry, which will complement our growing retirement services business as well as expand our wealth management practice,” said Creative Planning CEO and president Peter Mallouk in a statement.

Creative Planning is one of many large RIA acquirers that relies on private equity capital to finance its purchases. It has sold minority stakes in itself to the PE firms General Atlantic and TPG Capital.  Developments in Creative Planning’s purchase plans were previously reported by the industry publications CityWire and WealthManagement.com.

The acquisition also marks the exit of the private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners from SageView, which took a majority stake in the retirement specialist in 2021. Like many large wealth management firms, SageView has been growing through mergers and acquisitions in recent years. In August, it announced its purchase of Capital Strategies Investment Group, or Cap Strat, a retirement consultancy and wealth manager in Illinois with $25 billion in client assets.

“As Creative Planning continues to build their institutional retirement plan business, we are excited to be part of that process, leveraging our generations of expertise in this space and success in building one of the largest retirement-focused firms in the country,” SageView CEO John Langley said in a statement. “Together, we will become the premier wealth management and retirement plan consulting firm.”