MassMutual, the insurer with a more than $274 billion independent broker/dealer and RIA subsidiary, has launched a new private wealth division for over 6,000 affiliated advisors to target the growing market of high-net-worth clients.
Advisors with MassMutual’s MML Investor Services will be able to sync with MassMutual Private Wealth to access “more advanced planning, trust services or institutional-level investment support,” said Daken Vanderberg, MassMutual’s chief investment officer and newly appointed head of the new division.
The division was stood up at the end of 2025 and has been made available to advisors this year, according to Vanderberg. The firm had reported on the new division in a securities filing in mid-January.
Vanderberg said the firm was prompted to create a distinct private wealth division to meet demographic shifts in client needs.
“The total population of the United States has grown at around 9% since 2011,” he said. “But the number of wealthy households has just grown much, much faster.”
To create the division, the Springfield, Mass.-based MassMutual pulled together “sub-units” of the firm under one umbrella to create a more “cohesive experience” for both advisors and their clients. Those areas include investment model management, an OCIO-customized portfolio, direct indexing and trust services.
“It’s less about moving a specific set of advisors into a new group, and more about expanding the capabilities available to our advisor network,” Vanderberg said.
While the division will be available to all advisors depending on client need, it has a core “small subset of advisors” that consistently work with wealthier, more complex clients.
According to Cerulli Associates, the high-net-worth market, or those with $5 million or more in investable assets, will grow annually at about 9.3% to surpass $30 trillion in total assets by 2028. But the competitive landscape among large wealth managers to serve them is growing with them.
Last year, Edward Jones launched its first private client services offering, Edward Jones Generations, which the firm is bringing to more of its high-net-worth clients this year. A few weeks ago, national insurance company Farmers announced it had started a fee-only registered investment advisor channel to offer the option to both advisors and wealthier clients drawn to the model.
In addition, private equity-backed insurance and benefit aggregators such as OneDigital, Hub International and World Investment Advisors continue to recruit advisors and amass client assets.
According to data from ISS MI’s Discovery Data MarketPro, MML Investor Services’ clients are mostly in the mass affluent “individual” category, at about 92%. Its HNW client base, or those $1.1 million in assets under management or more and a net worth of $2.2 million or more, makes up 5% of its base, with the remainder with corporations (2%) and retirement plans (1%).
Vanderberg said MassMutual is well-positioned to compete for more such clients. He cited the firm’s national advisor presence, along with 175 years of brand recognition.
“The world is sort of separated into wealth folks or protection folks, and being able to bring those together under one umbrella, which is what really private wealth is doing … is a huge advantage for us,” he said.
He also points to the firm’s makeup as a mutual company, owned by policyholders, not shareholders or private equity. He argued that the setup reduces the need to push products to meet quarterly earnings benchmarks and gives space to “thoughtful long-term engagement” with clients.
Despite its core business being in insurance, risk and retirement products, Vanderberg said over the past 15 years, MassMutual has been investing in its planning, advice and wealth services.
The firm’s core wealth technology platform for advisors is Advisor360, initially developed by Commonwealth Financial Network and spun off in 2019.
Last year, MassMutual also announced a partnership with Orion as an optional investment platform for MML advisors. The move was, in part, to offer more investment options for high-net-worth clients and to serve as a recruiting draw for MassMutual, according to the announcement.
MML offers advisors several financial planning tools, including Fidelity Investments’ eMoney Advisor, Envestnet’s MoneyGuide and RightCapital. It also has a group of advisors testing two “leading decumulation and retirement distribution tools,” Daken said, along with onboarding the business-owner planning solution RISR. In the past year, the firm has also launched a Copilot‑style AI assistant and access to Zocks, an AI meeting notes platform for financial advisors.
Daken declined to say how many licenses MassMutual has for the various financial planning tools, but said they are “broadly available,” and that more specialized tools are based on business need.
“Our philosophy always starts with asking, ‘What are the issues that families are facing? What are the needs, what are the problems, what are the sources that we can help solve?’” he said. “It’s really much more about the financial planning component as a vehicle to pull all of these individual solutions together as opposed to the products we want to deliver for you.”
