Merit Financial adds LPL veteran Andy Kalbaugh to its board

Merit Financial Advisors, a fast-growing wealth management firm with $8.1 billion in combined advisory and brokerage assets, said Wednesday that LPL Financial veteran managing director Andy Kalbaugh had joined the firm's board of directors.

On Merit’s board, Kalbaugh will work with the firm's executive leadership on strategic planning.

Prior to starting at LPL in 2010, Kalbaugh had been an executive at Mutual Service Corp., which LPL acquired in 2007 from Pacific Life Insurance Co. He headed national sales at LPL before leaving in 2021 and has since worked as a consultant.

"Andy is coming on as an active board member," Merit Financial's CEO, Rick Kent, said in an interview Wednesday morning. "The two of us working together is really going to help Merit continue to grow."

"Most of my time with the board and Rick will be focused on managing growth," Kalbaugh said. "It's about business acumen, the business landscape, and assisting in future acquisitions. I've been involved in quite a few."

Other giant registered investment advisor-focused firms like Merit have brought on board senior industry executives as part of their path to growth.

Perhaps most notably, Private Advisor Group, LPL's largest branch office, in 2020 hired Robert "RJ" Moore as its CEO; Moore had been president of LPL Financial as wells as CEO of Cetera Financial Group. A year later, Private Advisor Group said it had tapped into fresh investor capital, and announced that that Merchant Investment Management had taken a noncontrolling minority stake in the firm.

In January 2021, Merit Financial said it had received an outside investment from two groups, Wealth Partners Capital Group, a financial services holding company, and a group of investors led by HGGC, a firm focused on partnerships with founders and management.

Since then, Merit has been busy. In Wednesday's announcement about adding Kalbaugh to the board, the firm said it has acquired 20 firms in the past year-and-a-half, adding $5.26 billion in assets and 22 new offices.

Based in the greater Atlanta area, Merit Financial Advisors uses LPL Financial as its broker-dealer and as one of its custodians, according to its most recent Form ADV.