Hires, Rebrand At Argent

Tom Burroughes

8 November 2018

Argent Trust, part of the Argent Financial Group based across the southern states of the US, has appointed new senior vice presidents to lead its funeral home trust business following the firm's new alliance with Live Oak Bank’s trust business, unveiled last month. Separately, another part of the Argent group is rebranding.

Steve Jackson is a Certified Trust and Financial Advisor, Certified Financial Planner and Certified Public Accountant and has more than 30 years of banking, trust and funeral services experience, while Jim Breaux has more than 20 years of banking and trust industry experience. Jackson, based in Wilmington, North Carolina, joins Argent as senior vice president of the company’s funeral and cemetery division and will be responsible for overall management of the group.

Breaux, based in New Orleans, joins as senior vice president and national sales executive. They all report to Mark Milton, senior vice president of institutional services, also based in New Orleans.

Before joining Argent Trust, Jackson was CEO of Live Oak Trust, a division of Live Oak Bank. Previously, he was senior vice president and regional trust manager for Regions Bank.

Rebrand
Argent Institutional Services, another part of the Argent group, is rebranding as Argent Retirement Plan Advisors. The new name reflects the division’s primary focus in providing fiduciary-level investment advisory services for employer-sponsored retirement plans. This entity remains a subsidiary of Argent Financial Group.

The name change affects offices in San Antonio, Texas; New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana; as well as Nashville, Tennessee. It will also be applied to Oklahoma City-based Heritage Institutional Services, which is part of Argent Financial Group.

Heritage Institutional Services will now be known as Heritage Retirement Plan Advisors. Heritage Retirement Plan Advisors will continue to operate in Oklahoma as a DBA of Argent Retirement Plan Advisors, formerly Argent Institutional Services.

Argent and Heritage Retirement Plan Advisors’ clients are mid-size to large employers and, in particular, their human resources departments.

This publication has interviewed Argent's trust business chief and its wealth management strategy.