Launching a new financial services business is familiar, fertile ground for Bill Lowe.

Earlier this year, he returned to Greater Des Moines to launch Sammons Retirement Solutions, the newest division of Sammons Financial Group. Lowe serves as president of the division, which will distribute retirement-oriented products such as mutual funds and variable annuities through broker-dealers and financial advisers.

Seventeen years ago, Lowe first came to Greater Des Moines to start a variable annuities division for Equitable of Iowa Cos., which is now part of Dutch financial services giant ING Groep NV.

“So this is the second time I’m starting a unit from scratch,” said Lowe, who most recently led ING’s individual retirement distribution group in Hartford, Conn. His other previous positions with ING include CEO of its U.S. annuity operations; he has also headed up that company’s 401(k) and IRA-rollover businesses. From 1994 to 2004, he led ING’s variable annuities division in Des Moines.

Not pulling back

Sammons Financial Group, an insurance holding company with annuity operations based in West Des Moines, has had a presence in Greater Des Moines for the past 12 years since its launch of Sammons Annuity Group. That division has since grown to 370 employees. Its parent company, Dallas-based Sammons Enterprises Inc., was ranked as the 138th-largest private U.S. company last year by Forbes magazine.

Lowe anticipates that the new retirement solutions division will reach $10 billion in assets and an employee base of approximately 100 within its first five years of operations.

“It’s interesting, because actually you’ve seen some pullback in the annuity marketplace by a lot of carriers, which is a core component of the individual retirement space for insurers,” he said. “But the market we’re really focusing on is the IRA (individual retirement account) rollover market, which is a very significant market. We also will do other forms of retirement products as well, but that is the largest pool of what we’re after.”

The division is currently located at 4350 Westown Parkway, but as it expands its work force late this year, it will move across the street to office space that Sammons already leases.

Under Internal Revenue Service rules, an individual can make an IRA rollover, or tax-free distribution from a retirement account to an IRA. There are several kinds of retirement accounts that can be rolled over into a traditional IRA, including another traditional IRA, an employer’s qualified plan such as a 401(k) plan, a deferred compensation plan (section 457 plan) and a tax-sheltered annuity plan such as a 403(b).

IRA rollovers have driven significant growth in the overall IRA market, which is now larger than the 401(k) market, according to data published by LIMRA, a global association of insurance and financial companies. LIMRA estimates that IRA rollovers will reach $276 billion this year, a 47 percent increase from 2001, when rollovers totaled less than $188 billion. In 2013, IRA rollovers are expected to surpass $306 billion.

By the end of this year, Lowe anticipates having approximately 50 employees in place. The majority of them will be based in West Des Moines to begin selling and administering a line of retirement savings products that the division is developing. Lowe expects sales to begin in early 2012.

New opportunities

“There will be a number of positions, some more project-oriented, others more technical and focusing on product development in the early stages,” he said. “Then as we launch we’ll have more of the sales team brought on board.”

The new positions represent a broad array of opportunities, Lowe said, “and so far what I have seen is that we’ve had a lot of interest in every position we’ve put out. We’ve had very high-end resumes. It’s a very competitive space right now.”

Sammons appears to be building a reputation in the Central Iowa employment market, Lowe said.

“I’ll ask people when I’m talking to them, ‘What excites you about this position?’ Almost everyone I talk to says, ‘Somebody I know works at Sammons, and they’re always talking about what a great firm it is.’ So I think Sammons is becoming much better-known in the local market as really an employer of choice,” he said.

Lowe acknowledged that the new venture will be going head-to-head with some well-established competitors, several of them based in Greater Des Moines.

“I’ve been in this space for a long, long time,” he said. “So I know what it takes to be competitive in this marketplace, and I think Sammons has all of the components. You saw a lot of dislocation created by the economic crisis, and I think that actually creates an opportunity for firms like Sammons, where it might be a little bit harder in a traditional market to enter this space.”

Professionally, Lowe said, this start-up is more exciting for him than the one he accomplished for ING, in part because Sammons has dedicated more resources to it.

Additionally, “the market is very different than it was back then; I think it’s much more technical,” he said. “So the skills needed to be in this market are just at a higher level than when I helped start the variable annuity business.

“This is a very exciting one; I think breaking into this market will be quite an achievement.”