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State of Play
If you’re based in the U.S. and have a retirement account (which I presume many of you financially sophisticated readers do), there is a decent chance you have logged into Ascensus at some point.
With more than $900 billion under administration across roughly 16 million accounts, Ascensus is one of the dominant infrastructure providers powering retirement plans. It operates alongside well known financial institutions such as Vanguard and Fidelity, but with a more focused strategy around smaller and mid sized employers.
What you probably didn’t realize is that Ascensus has been owned by private equity for nearly two decades. Over that period, the company has gone through several strategic pivots that ultimately transformed it from a record keeping provider into one of the most aggressive consolidators of third party administrators in the country.
This is a classic private equity playbook. A mission critical service. Recurring revenue. Structural tailwinds. Fragmentation. Multiple arbitrage. No wonder why PE loves this business.
Let’s dig in.