Q&A with Peter Mallouk

Q: How long was Creative Planning looking to buy BerganKDV and what made them stand out?

A: We have been talking for over a year. What we are looking for in this acquisition is to broaden our talent base and add a more robust component of tax advice, particularly for business owner clients. 

Q: How does this acquisition rank in terms of employee numbers, is 600 the largest? And how do you plan on retaining all these new members of your workforce?

A: It’s the largest by far, by personal is probably five times bigger than the next biggest. I think for the team there, it’s an enormous opportunity. They have more opportunities for growth, flexibility and geographical opportunities as well. Its a big win for their team just as it is for ours. But if you woke up yesterday at Bergan and you woke up today at Creative Planning, you got everything you had just a lot more on top of it. 

Q: Explain the origins of Creative Planning Business, when did the need arise to invest in this new branch and how will it help bolster your national footprint?

A: We served thousands of business owners all over the United States even before this acquisition and we already provide a lot of services to those business owners from 401K services like start-up plans to plans with hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars. 

But we needed to round out that offering to have the other things that many of our clients were asking for like expanded bill pay, outsourced CFO, payroll services and so on. This acquisition allows us to not only give the clients what they were asking for but also get it to them faster as opposed to doing it on our own. 

Q: Creative Planning Business seems to be setting a foundation for future expansion in the client-business space, how do you see Creative Planning Business growing 12-24 months down the road?

A: I think that we are looking to, probably, double the number of people we serve in that business space because of what we are able to do for them. That’s our goal. It definitely improves our regional footprint. We go from maybe two employees in Iowa to four significant offices in Iowa. We also expanded our regional offices in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska and of course Kansas and Missouri. So, regionally it’s helping with our presence quite a bit already. 

Q: Was there competitive reasoning behind the acquisition, especially in terms of its regional Midwest outreach? Is the region prime how wealth management investment?

A: This marks our thirty-eighth acquisition, I believe. For us, being headquartered in the Midwest a cultural fit was very important to us. We were more familiar with Bergan than a lot of other opportunities presented to us and that was a huge factor for us. 

This is a lot of activity here in the Midwest and we are not only proud of what we’ve accomplished so far but we’ve gotten here by being relentlessly focused on the clients and everything in this deal reflects that. Its Creative Plannings recipe for success to date.