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Positioning LPL
By Frances A. McMorris
February 25, 2011
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Bill Dwyer won’t say whether the traditional wirehouse, employee-channel firms should be keeping an eye on LPL.
“It’s not our place to discern whether they should be worked about us or we should be worried about them,” said Dwyer, LPL’s president of sales and national marketing, in an interview Thursday. “There’s plenty out there for everyone.”
However, in the last few years—make that even the last few months—LPL has been making its presence felt. The firm recently went public and in terms of advisor count, it stands as the fourth-largest firm in the brokerage space.
For the average investor, LPL doesn’t have the name recognition that Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has enjoyed in years past. But that doesn’t seem to matter.
For LPL, Dwyer said, the goal has been to reach the critical mass so the firm can make the investment in technology and other processes that help advisors grow their businesses. He counts more sophisticated technology, a wider range of products and a strong independent advisory model as the reasons for his firm’s success.
There has been a series of steps LPL has taken in its march toward dominating the independent space. For instance, Dwyer said, in 2006, LPL’s business consulting unit assigned a relationship manager to more than 70% of production. With salesforce.com, LPL provided improved customer relationship management software for help its advisors segment and manage their business so they could spend more time with investor-clients. The firm also brought in new trading software to help advisors rebalance client assets.
In 2008, LPL launched its “Model Wealth Portfolios” to further help advisors with manager selection, rebalancing asset allocation and providing more opportunity for ETF investing.
Earlier this month, LPL, already one of the top five distributors of variable annuities, announced the launch of a fee-based variable annuity platform. Through the platform, LPL’s advisors can manage VA assets within a fee-based relationship and on a discretionary basis. This will enable advisors to offer active portfolio management with the protection of an annuity.
The platform offers variable annuity products from Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America and Allianz Life Insurance Co. of New York, Axa Equitable, Lincoln National, Prudential Annuities and Sun Life Financial.
And while the largest, traditional firms have concentrated on the high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth investor market; LPL has cast a wider net.
Dwyer points to the demographics of retirement, noting that 7,000 people a day are retiring and that by the year 2020, there will be 43 million people in the 55 to 65 year age group—more than 100% than are in that group since 1988, versus today. And those years are the one that clients really focus on investing, Dwyer said. LPL, paying attention to that trend, acquired National Retirement Partners in July. NRP provided LPL with more the 150 offices in more than 39 states. NRP’s independent advisors provide plan consulting, fiduciary best practices and due diligence to retirement plan sponsors.
So, LPL is looking at the mass affluent as well as the ultra-rich. According to Dwyer: “We’re helping investors in Peoria as well as in New York City. The high-net-worth market gets a lot of press but the reality is that there is opportunity at both ends of the spectrum.”
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Growth -- the kind measured in revenue and profits -- is the ultimate goal for the entire brokerage industry. As On Wall Street editor-in-chief Frances McMorris points out, figuring out how to achieve these goals while dealing with constant change is what firms like Raymond James and its competitors are now learning to do on the fly.
While there may be investing opportunities in the markets, the weak housing market and unemployment hovering just above 9% are the issues that concern the nation and that are depressing the president’s poll numbers. And, voters -- including those without jobs and those who want to look for better ones --are getting mighty impatient.
While there may be investing opportunities in the markets, the weak housing market and unemployment hovering just above 9% are the issues that concern the nation and that are depressing the president’s poll numbers. And, voters -- including those without jobs and those who want to look for better ones --are getting mighty impatient.
I hate mixed messages but it seems there is finally some good news on the employment front. According to the Department of Labor this morning, non-farm payroll employment added 244,000 jobs in April, with the private sector seeing job growth of 268,000.
While that figure exceeded expectations, the unemployment rate rose to 9%. Some experts explained that increase to the people who weren’t looking for jobs now resuming their job-hunt. …
Advisors should be building on their strengths, their interests and, of course, their talents. The best and the brightest advisors have one thing in common: Each one has found his or her specialty or strength and constructed a platform for success.
Just when the advisory community was hoping that it had put Bernie Madoff behind it, federal authorities announced that two of the disgraced financier’s lieutenants have been indicted on criminal charges and are also facing a civil complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service announced earlier this week that it has withdrawn the John Doe summons in the UBS AG scandal in which the U.S. demanded that the company hand over…
Just when branch managers thought their jobs couldn’t get any more complicated, Mary Schapiro says that her agency is looking at regulating broker pay.
If a client’s spouse has been diagnosed with cancer, how does everything change? How do you talk to the client, the spouse and perhaps other family members?
The president of Raymond James & Associates and the chairman of RJFS talks about recruiting, retention and valuing the control advisors have over their books of business.
There is a 20-year age difference between Shelly Church and Ilona Sawin, yet they have found enough common ground to form their own financial advisory team at Raymond James & Associates.
At a gala fundraiser, Wall Street shows that money isn’t its only concern but that it can show generosity and patriotism in helping the children of fallen soldiers and wounded warriors.
If money is the root of all evil, then Wall Street certainly provides the tree and branches—at least that appears to be the perspective of filmmaker Charles Ferguson.
Frances McMorris was named editor-in-chief of ON WALL STREET in February 2008, after serving as executive editor since December 2004. She also created and serves as the host of AdvisorTV, an online video interview show appearing at onwallstreet.com.
From indictments to verdicts and appeals, Ms. McMorris has covered many major, high-profile cases in both federal and state courts as a legal affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, Newsday and The New York Law Journal. The cases that she has covered include: the seditious conspiracy trial of Sheik Oman Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of being the spiritual mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center; the constitutional battle over the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy; the Crown Heights riot murder trial; federal racketeering cases against violent gangs; the Long Island pet cemetery trial and several securities fraud and insider trading cases, among others.
The legal issues she has written about are diverse and numerous, ranging from economic espionage to employment discrimination rulings and the first story to report that there is no expectation of privacy for employee emails written in the workplace.
Ms. McMorris is a 1993 graduate of Fordham University School of Law and admitted to the New York and New Jersey bars. She has appeared on the former CNNfn to give expert commentary on trials.
She also served as president of the Newswomen’s Club of New York for three years while working as an assistant managing editor at The Daily Deal in New York.
ON WALL STREET magazine has a circulation of more than 90,000—reaching financial advisors and brokers at the most prestigious brokerage firms who serve high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth investors.
FEED
Frances McMorris was named editor-in-chief of ON WALL STREET in February 2008, after serving as executive editor since December 2004. She also created and serves as the host of AdvisorTV, an online video interview show appearing at onwallstreet.com. 
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