The newest member of LPL Financial's Management Committee views outsourced services for financial advisors as integral to the continued success of the largest independent brokerage.
LPL promoted Aneri Jambusaria, who has led the firm's Services Group since 2021 after joining the firm a year earlier from Fidelity Investments, to
Her group's
In a conversation with Financial Planning Chief Correspondent Tobias Salinger, Jambusaria explained what's driving the adoption of outsourced services among LPL advisors to the tune of 4,479 subscriptions by the end of 2022. The number rose 48% last year.
With
The following conversation with FP has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
FP: How many different kinds of outsourced services is LPL now providing to financial advisors?
Aneri Jambusaria: We started this journey around services back in 2019. And we started thinking about it as an expansion of how we think about practice management at LPL. So practice management, as you know, is traditionally very focused on consulting. We'll give you a plan, we'll give you some ideas on what to do. But it's kind of up to you to execute those changes, to take administrative work off your plate or, you know, to build out a marketing presence or do more financial planning. And so we had this idea of, 'Hey, what if we helped our advisors and our financial institutions to actually execute in addition to giving them those ideas?' That was the concept behind the Services Group.
We started off by launching a set of business solutions that you've probably heard or read about that were really focused on running a thriving business. So those were our admin, our marketing and our CFO solutions.
Over time, we added additional protection services like the assurance plan. And then, more recently, we launched a new set of services around planning and advice, including our paraplanning service and our partial book sales service. So we actually have 10 services that are in market. And we've got over 3,000 advisors and financial institutions who are leveraging our services today.
FP: And how much do they pay generally, for those services?
Jambusaria: We don't disclose the pricing of our services more broadly. I will say that we have a whole spectrum of our portfolio between services that we actually give away for free, and then others that we charge a fee for. And we're really focused on making sure that we're maximizing for adoption and growth, enabling as many advisors and financial institutions as possible to take advantage of these services, but also to be able to provide additional support that we wouldn't have otherwise.
FP: How does LPL market these services to advisors? And what do you think is driving the notable increases in adoption that we see each quarter?
Jambusaria: If you look at our customer growth, it's been close to 40% year over year for the past couple of years. The first thing I'll say is that we really feel like we've hit a need that advisors and financial institutions have. Many of them have been looking for trusted partners, folks that they can rely on, access to expertise that maybe they can't find in their local market. So we really feel like there's strong product-market fit for many of our services.
But beyond that, we definitely are focused on making the 21,000-and-growing advisors at LPL aware of our services that we offer. So we of course reach out to them via email campaigns and intranet sites posts. And we also are very visible at our conferences, as well, to make sure that folks are just aware of the support that's available to them. But, again, these are all optional services, right? And so it's very much up to the advisor or financial institution to decide if they want to leverage one or more of these services.
FP: What other areas is LPL targeting for outsourced services in the future? Or if you're maybe not able to get into specifics at this time, how does your team come up with the ideas for them?
Jambusaria: Every service that we provide starts, first and foremost, by listening to our advisors and financial institutions. So we've got a regular drumbeat of really understanding what's top of mind for our customers. Where are the areas where they can most use our support? And then we will incubate new services accordingly. I'll share a couple of things that are currently in the development process or evaluation process.
One is tax planning. So tax planning is something that we heard really loud and clear from our advisors, especially once we launched our paraplanning service. Many folks were looking to expand their value proposition into tax planning. It is one of those growing areas of value for financial advisors to provide, but many folks just felt like they didn't didn't always have access to the tax planning expertise that they would need to be able to offer that service. And so we've been piloting our tax planning offering that we're hoping to launch this year, and we've built a team of in-house tax planning experts that our advisors can tap into for that purpose. That's one area.
The other area that we've been exploring more on the business services side is this concept of foundational services. So really helping with the day-to-day needs for every advisor of all shapes and sizes. We've kind of started down this journey. We launched a bookkeeping service this past year, because bookkeeping, you know, having accurate books and records, that's something that every independent financial advisor needs to do. And so we're exploring other similar opportunities, like, you know, making sure advisors feel confident that they're sending their clients regular birthday cards or emails, or that they feel confident about their financial reports and their KPIs associated with running their business. So those are just some areas that we're exploring currently.
FP: As a new member of LPL's Management Committee, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing the firm, and how do you intend to help LPL meet it?
Jambusaria: Let me first say I'm really excited to be part of the Management Committee of a company that is so focused on our customers. It's pretty unique to have a firm like LPL that's so focused on really understanding the needs of advisors and financial institutions and is so committed to their roles in the broader kind of wealth management spectrum and perspective.
I think we've had a lot of success over the past few years, and I think maintaining that success and continuing to stay in a leadership position is going to be a big opportunity for us. And certainly I feel very strongly that services are a differentiator for us today. We're not the only firm that is pursuing the strategy. But I feel like we're certainly really focused on it. We're making a lot of investments in this space, because we see the impact that it's having on our advisors, both in terms of their overall satisfaction with LPL and their success and ability to bring on new clients. But also, you know, just in terms of their overall peace of mind and being able to fulfill their broader objectives of what they're looking to accomplish in their life. And in the end, that's why we're here.
FP: To wrap up, is there anything else that financial advisors should know either about the services group or your plans as a new managing director of LPL Financial?
Jambusaria: Just that we want to listen to them. We want to hear what's on their mind. And so my door is always open. I'm always interested in what our financial advisors have to say, what they think about our existing services, about additional services we could provide. I think that approach of listening to our customers is what's going to make us successful in the future.
