BPAS Completes Transaction with What’s Next 4 Financial Advisors

BPAS announced today that it has acquired the What’s Next 4 Financial Advisors coaching practice. 

What’s Next offers professional coaching and consulting services to financial advisors looking to build more efficient, more profitable businesses. With more than 75 years of advisor consulting experience, the What’s Next team creates a customized, strategic roadmap to help advisors grow their businesses and get to the next level, while helping their clients achieve a strong alignment of business, personal, and life goals. 

“We help great advisors build great businesses,” said Tate Kerst, What’s Next Founder and Managing Partner. “With the marketplace getting more complex and more competitive, we found that our friends and clients were asking for more help and more services than ever before. It was clear that we needed to expand our resources.”  

Understanding that the changing landscape required a new strategy, What’s Next began discussions with BPAS about a potential collaboration. “We’d spent a lot of time with BPAS over the last year,” added Kerst. “They are tremendous people and provide an extremely broad range of services to their financial partners. We found a great strategic and cultural fit between our firms.” The companies reached agreement with a February 1, 2025 effective date. 

Founded in 1973, BPAS delivers a full range of services in partnership with advisors, trustees, and financial professionals across the nation. With a mission to simplify the complicated, BPAS delivers innovative solutions designed to give financial partners a competitive edge in today’s marketplace. BPAS services include: Workplace Retirement Plans, Actuarial & Pension, Health Benefits Consulting, IRAs, VEBA/115 Trusts, Health & Welfare Plans, Fiduciary, Collective Investment Funds, Fund Administration, Institutional Trust, and now Coaching for Financial Advisors. 

  The entire What’s Next team will become BPAS employees operating under a new BPAS What’s Next division, a firewalled specialty coaching practice dedicated to coaching advisors, corporate trustees, and other partners. 

 The companies were introduced by a firm colleague, Nicole Hendrix of Nottingham Advisors (a BPAS sister company). She was developing a partner solution for What’s Next that featured the collaborative services of BPAS and Nottingham. According to Mike Cerminaro, Nottingham CEO, “We’ve seen first-hand how professional coaching can move the needle for wealth practices so we couldn’t be more pleased to add these services to our collaborative offering.”  

 “Partnering with the What’s Next team allows us to expand the services and resources available to our national network of advisors, trustees, and financial partners,” said Paul Neveu, BPAS CEO. “It’s always been a top priority at BPAS to help our partners grow their practices through the full range of technical, administrative and consulting services.  Adding expert coaching services with the What’s Next team allows us to take that mission a step further. Bringing business coaching is a very different angle – it’s more interpersonal and philosophical and will be a great way to help drive success for our financial partners.” 

 “The partnership also enhances the services and resources available to our clients, making us more strategic” said Kerst. “BPAS is a major, national player that works with thousands of firms from coast to coast on a range of technical, consulting, and administrative solutions. We look forward to new chapters together.”