LPL Financial taps wirehouse veteran to lead recruiting effort

Continuing the churn in LPL Financial's recruiting group, the leader of the unit, Bill Morrissey, managing director and head of business development, is retiring and being replaced by a wirehouse veteran. Mr. Morrissey has been with LPL for more than 14 years, the company said in a statement Monday. A veteran of UBS Financial Services Inc., Richard Steinmeier, is replacing Mr. Morrissey. Mr. Steinmeier will officially join LPL in the middle of August. Most recently, Mr. Steinmeier was managing director and chief digital officer for UBS. Prior to joining UBS in 2012, Mr. Steinmeier worked at Merrill Lynch as well as McKinsey & Co. Mr. Morrissey is retiring to spend more time with his family, the company said in a statement. LPL, which is an industry powerhouse when it comes to recruiting, recently has seen several senior and mid-level recruiters jump ship or retire. One conspicuous departure was disclosed in May, when Cetera Financial Group said it hired Michael Murray, most recently one of a handful of senior vice presidents of recruiting at LPL, in the role of head of business development at Cetera. At least 11 recruiters have left LPL in the last 16 months, InvestmentNews reported last month. Last August, LPL announced it was changing its policy to require new recruits to custody their first $50 million in assets at LPL, a move that some branch managers saw as a threat to their ability to recruit because of questions over pricing. That policy change may have pushed some of its recruiters to jump ship, industry observers have said. LPL has a huge recruiting operation, with as many as 50 to 80 internal and external recruiters beating the bushes for advisers. Recruiters are highly coveted and may jump ship for any number of reasons, from more pay to family and personal issues. Meanwhile, as LPL is losing recruiters, it is trying to sweeten its offer to bring in new advisers and assets to its platform. In April, the firm said it was focusing recruiting on advisers at select firms, including Cetera Financial Group, Kestra Financial Group and Securities America Inc., according to sources. The offer is in the form of a three-year forgivable loan that pays an adviser 50 basis points on assets under management transferred to LPL. There's a catch, however. LPL is only paying advisers for AUM that land on its corporate RIA or are under home office supervision. "Bill's hard work and commitment over 14 years contributed to the company's success in a variety of different ways, and we wish him well," LPL's president and CEO, Dan Arnold, said in the company statement.