Empower Advisory Group

Empower Advisory Group operates as Empower's in-house registered investment adviser. Day-to-day investment management is executed by Empower Capital Management, its affiliated investment management arm, under the broader leadership of Edmund F. Murphy III as President and CEO of Empower. The advisory group delivers managed account portfolios constructed by internal investment teams, often using proprietary glide-path models for retirement savers and goal-based planning frameworks for retail clients.

The firm's primary sourcing advantage is its position within the Empower retirement ecosystem. Each year, millions of participants leave their employer-sponsored plans and must decide where to roll over their assets. Empower Advisory Group is positioned as the natural in-house destination for those rollovers. The 2020 acquisition of Personal Capital's advisory business added a secondary channel of digitally sourced, mass-affluent clients seeking comprehensive planning.

It is a retail wealth manager and registered investment adviser, not a family office. The firm provides advisory services to individual retirement plan participants and mass-affluent retail clients. It sits within Empower, a large, for-profit financial services conglomerate ultimately owned by Great-West Lifeco.

The advisory group allocates client assets into managed account portfolios that invest in mutual funds and ETFs across various asset classes. It does not function as an institutional fund investor making commitments to private equity, hedge, or venture capital funds on behalf of its retail clients. The platform is designed around liquid, publicly available securities in a fiduciary advisory wrapper.

Portfolios are built using an asset allocation framework developed by Empower's internal investment team, with tactical tilts made periodically. The firm employs a goals-based approach for retail clients, often structured around retirement income planning. Managed accounts are typically implemented using third-party active and passive funds, with asset classes spanning domestic equities, international developed and emerging market equities, investment-grade fixed income, and high-yield bonds.

Empower is a wholly owned subsidiary of Great-West Lifeco, a Canadian financial services holding company. Empower, in turn, operates several regulated entities, including Empower Advisory Group (the RIA), Empower Retirement (the recordkeeper), and Empower Life & Annuity Insurance Company. The advisory group functions as a distinct legal entity with its own fiduciary obligations to clients, though it benefits from the capital backing and institutional infrastructure of its parent.

Empower does not publicly break out assets under management for the advisory group separately from its recordkeeping assets. The parent entity administers over $1.4 trillion for roughly 18 million retirement plan participants, but only a portion of those assets are in advisory relationships overseen by Empower Advisory Group. Direct advisory AUM figures have not been disclosed in a dedicated, verifiable filing.