One of city’s largest, oldest benefits firms to be acquired

One of the Indianapolis-area’s oldest and largest employee benefits services firms has agreed to be acquired by the nation’s largest independent provider of retirement and college savings services.

Dresher, Pennsylvania-based Ascensus announced Tuesday that it has an agreement to acquire Nyhart, which has about 110 employees in Indianapolis. Financial terms of the deal, expected to close Dec. 2, were not disclosed.

Nyhart, founded in 1943 by Howard Nyhart, has more than 2,400 clients in 50 states and customer assets of more than $20 billion. It offers retirement and health care benefits services and consulting. It ranks third on IBJ’s list of largest area benefits firms in terms of employment.

The employee-owned company has offices outside Indiana in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, New York, San Diego and St. Louis.

Ascensus, founded in 1975, is the largest independent recordkeeping services provider, third-party administrator and government savings facilitator in the United States, with more than $163 billion in assets under management. The company has more than 2,400 employees nationwide and serves more than 48,000 retirement plans.

Its affiliate third-party administrator, FuturePlan, is the nation’s largest retirement TPA. Nyhart will immediately become part of the FuturePlan line of business after the acquisition closes, Ascensus said.

Over the past two years, Ascensus has acquired more than two dozen TPAs throughout the country in an effort to achieve larger scale in the growing 401(k) market.

“Nyhart’s unique strengths complement our already broad service offerings at FuturePlan and immediately increase our capacity to serve larger, more complex plans,” Jerry Bramlett, head of FuturePlan, said in written remarks.

Nyhart CEO Lisa Hague and her management team will join Ascensus.

“At Nyhart, we consistently look to hire and invest in high-quality people in order to provide the best possible service throughout our lines of business,” Hague said in written comments. “As part of FuturePlan, we can access the resources of a larger organization to the benefit of our clients while still providing them with the personalized experience and creative solutions that they’ve come to expect from us.”