A hybrid RIA practice with $446 million in client assets joined Securities America from National Planning, pushing exits following its parent firm’s deal with LPL Financial to more than $11.5 billion.
Partners Barbara Williams, Gloria Foote and Kate Hewell brought Financial Focus, which also includes advisor Jerrie Carli, to Securities America in Carlsbad, California, the firm announced this week. Securities America has poached
LPL,
Securities America, the largest IBD in the Ladenburg Thalmann network and ninth overall, has alone grabbed advisors with roughly $2.9 billion in client assets — the most of any of LPL’s competitors. Recruiter Louis Diamond has arranged six placements of NPH advisors with Securities America, he says.
“Their internal people seem to be all over this, far ahead of everyone else,” Diamond says. “The directive is: ‘This is our opportunity. Even if it’s outside our parameters, let’s get these people in.’ And it’s clearly working.”
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CEO Dan Arnold listed three reasons why the firm thinks its rivals peeled off some advisors.
November 8 -
The practice’s managing director blamed the No. 1 IBD in part for its move to Securities America.
November 13 -
The fourth largest IBD added a super OSJ with $650 million in AUM.
November 7
The wirehouses have lost teams overseeing more than $12 billion in client assets over the past month, according to recent hiring announcements.
Financial Focus officially moved to Securities America from its BD for the past 17 years on Oct. 24, according to FINRA BrokerCheck. A spokeswoman for NPH and a spokesman for LPL declined to comment on the practice’s departure.
TRANSITION ASSISTANCE
LPL CEO Dan Arnold expects roughly 70% of production from National Planning and another BD owned by NPH to go to LPL next month in the first wave of the transition,
He cited “economic incentives” beyond LPL’s price range as one factor that may have prompted advisors to look elsewhere. LPL
Securities America provided Financial Focus with a five-year, $503,270 forgivable loan in connection with the BD switch, the practice’s latest Form ADV filing shows. The disclosure marks an additional step of transparency to get ahead of
The loan, which Securities America will forgive if the practice remains with it for five years, will help pay for “moving expenses, leasing space, furniture, staff and termination fees associated with moving accounts” but Financial Focus “does not confirm the use of these payments for such transition costs,” the ADV says.
Williams and Foote launched the San Diego-area practice in 1984. Hewell, who worked for LPL for five years, came aboard as part of a succession plan three years ago. The firm counts roughly 750 households as its clients, and its RIA listed $104.3 million in assets under management on the ADV form.
The partners wanted a smaller IBD than LPL, and
Financial Focus will retain Pershing as its custodian for its brokerage assets and Charles Schwab for the RIA’s assets. The partners chose Securities America out of 10 initial options in an effort to make the practice “as similar as we could” to its prior format, says Hewell.
“This wasn’t something we would have done had we not been forced to make this move,” she says. “What it came down to was trying to do the best thing for our clients.”
