Score one more for both LPL Financial and its growing super-OSJs.
Faubourg Private Wealth Advisors, a new breakaway broker team turned independent from suburban New Orleans, has joined LPL's broker-dealer platform and will provide fee-based services to clients through Level Four Wealth Management, a Plano, Texas-based super-OSJ.
Faubourg founding partners P. David Soliman and Tyson Vanlandingham began their partnership after meeting at JP Morgan five years ago and decided to go independent earlier this year, building on a mass affluent client base with around $175 million in assets.
While impressed by LPL's size and scale, they also liked the idea of working with Level Four, Soliman says, praising its additional flexibility, investment models and multi-custodial platform.
"We believe independent advice is the future, and felt being with other trusted advisors is the best way to grow and attract different advisors from around Louisiana," he explains, adding that Faubourg plans to diversify its business to include high-net-worth individuals, retirees and endowments, currently its fastest-growing business segment.
DIVERSIFYING FOR THE FUTURE
High-performing ensemble firms like Faubourg with diversified lines of business are "the future of the business," says Level Four chief executive Jake Tomes. "Firms will have to work in teams and have different experiences and disciplines."
Both Tomes and Soliman say that helping those firms grow is where a super-OSJ like Level Four comes in, providing coaching and mentoring along with other support services.
Level Four's own growth has also been impressive. Founded 15 years ago, the super-OSJ now works with more than 120 advisory firms around the country, concentrated mainly in the south, Tomes says.
Super-OSJs who can offer "access and intimacy" within the confines of mega IBDs like LPL will continue to grow, he says adding that Level Four plans to build out branch offices throughout the southeast in the next several years.
Advisors should expect the clout of these super-OSJs to keep building, predicts Bill Butterfield, research analyst for the Aite Group.
“Super-OSJs are building scale," Butterfield says, "allowing smaller broker-dealers to maintain their culture and become large revenue producers.”
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