Great-West Lifeco's US subsidiary Empower has closed its acquisition of Milliman's retirement plan and benefits administration business, first announced on June 30.
The deal adds roughly 400 defined benefit plans covering about 790,000 participants and US$80 billion in client assets, more than 1,100 defined contribution plans covering roughly 750,000 participants and over US$50 billion in assets, and 100 health and welfare administration clients serving about 100,000 participants.
In total, the acquisition pushes Empower's footprint to more than 22 million lives served, over US$2.3 trillion in client assets, and 96,000 workplace plans. Approximately 800 Milliman employees are joining Empower as part of the deal.
"This transaction significantly strengthens our ability to compete and win across the full spectrum of retirement solutions by bringing a leading defined benefit platform in-house," Empower CEO Edmund F. Murphy III said when the deal was first announced.
Empower financed the US$340 million total consideration with existing cash resources, paying US$244 million at closing with the remainder spread over five years, a structure Great-West said would have no pro forma impact on its holding company cash balance or leverage ratio.
The acquired business operates entirely under US regulatory frameworks and adds no direct Canadian book of business. But as Insurance Business reported when the deal was first announced, the transaction is a useful signal for where Great-West's parent company sees its growth coming from.
Empower's US segment already contributes roughly 26% of Great-West's adjusted earnings, against Canada's 31% as the largest single contributor, and this deal adds further weight to the US side of that balance.
That's consistent with a broader pattern among Canada's large insurers of looking abroad for scale rather than relying primarily on domestic market growth, a dynamic Canadian group benefits advisors should keep in mind when assessing how much strategic attention and capital their own market segment will continue to receive relative to faster-growing US operations within the same parent company.
For an industry that has spent years watching defined benefit pension administration shrink as a share of the overall retirement market, in favour of defined contribution plans, Empower specifically targeting DB administration capability is worth noting.
Adding a dedicated, scalable DB platform rather than simply growing DC assets suggests Empower sees continued institutional demand for specialized DB servicing, likely from large legacy pension plans that still need sophisticated administration even as new DB plan formation has slowed.
That's a different growth thesis than most retirement services providers have pursued in recent years, and one Canadian pension consultants and plan sponsors dealing with legacy DB obligations domestically may find instructive, even if Empower's own DB book remains entirely US-based.
This closing also lands amid other acquisition activity across Great-West's Canadian operations specifically. Canada Life has separately been active in acquiring disability management provider Santé Circle Health, indicating the parent company's appetite for inorganic growth extends across its Canadian and US brands simultaneously rather than being concentrated in one market.
For brokers and plan sponsors working with Canada Life domestically, that pattern suggests continued investment in service capability expansion is likely across the group, even as the scale of individual deals, and the markets they target, varies considerably between the US and Canadian sides of the business.
