Originally published in Wealth Management on August 14, 2026.
According to Bonnie Treichel, a founder and chief solutions officer at Endeavor Retirement, the acquisitions will help Creative Planning navigate the litigation minefields of the retirement space by bringing the infrastructure in-house. But she warned that, despite its benefits, the convergence of the wealth and retirement spaces comes with risks for wealth-focused firms.
“Specialists who are used to that space, they’re used to doing that all the time,” she said. “A lot of these cases, they result in a settlement; or it’s not actually that the fiduciary did anything wrong, because the standard isn’t that you actually choose the right funds. The standard is that you follow a process, but you might have to litigate for 10 years to get that answer.”
Additionally, Treichel noted that these types of cases (in which a class action plaintiff pursues damages against plan fiduciaries for oversight) have proliferated in recent years, due in part to publicly available data on retirement plans via ERISA-mandated federal filings (unlike a wealth firm, where retail investor data is not typically publicly available).
“The dollar figures are so different,” Treichel said. “And the way they’re brought are very different, too … in some ways, there’s big money behind bringing these cases.”