Insurance co. wants to help advisors retain assets past the rollover stage. John Hancock has created a new team within its Special Markets Advisory Group to help financial planners and advisors provide effective tax- and estate-planning services to their clients.

Help keeping assets

"We are now in a new era of retirement planning that is much more sophisticated and technical than in decades past," says Hugh McHaffie, head of John Hancock's wealth-management division. "Our new Special Markets group is just one more way we at John Hancock are showing our commitment to the IRA rollover market, and our commitment to the retirement needs of baby boomers and their tax and estate planning advisors."

Hancock staffer and attorney Brandon Buckingham will lead the new team. He reports to Mike Treske, head of variable-annuity sales in the financial-planner channel. Other members of Buckingham's team include attorneys Jennifer Gugliotti, who joined John Hancock from Braintree, Mass.-based KAF Financial Group, and Dru Donatelli, who joined from Toronto-based Sun Life. Both specialize in tax, estate and retirement planning.

The new team is an "external complement" to John Hancock's Boston-based 12-member Special Markets group.

John Hancock is a unit of Toronto-based insurance company Manulife.

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