LPL's CIO says tools are sound

LPL Financial will increase its spending on monitoring tools and in other areas to make sure it does not experience a repeat of last year's technology glitches, according to its new chief information officer. Chris Feeney, who joined the San Diego-based unit of Linsco/Private Ledger Corp. last week, oversees the independent broker-dealer's business technology services group. He joined LPL from Thomson Financial in New York, where he was global managing director of wealth management, overseeing Thomson's products and services for its brokerage, mutual fund and advisory customers. "As you grow like LPL has, you've got to make the investment in monitoring tools, and we know that reliability and recoverability are a constant — a part of the fabric of our business," he said.
In August, LPL, headquartered in Boston and San Diego, experienced a technical failure that left about 7,000 representatives without online access to client accounts for three days. Mr. Feeney said he is comfortable with the progress that has been made since the outage. "I've taken an on-the-ground look, and we're in really good shape. When you think back to the fall — it's really been thought out and thought through during the interim period. It's now down to execution," Mr. Feeney said. Following the technical failure, LPL hired Tony Perez Sales from turnaround specialist AlixPartners LLP of Southfield, Mich., on an interim basis to fill the CIO position vacated by Andrew Duggan. Mr. Feeney reports to Esther Stearns, president and chief operating officer. "LPL was a client of mine before my coming here, and I'm very cognizant of the virtues of the platform, not just the network. So I see it as a matter of staying focused. Our [current] processes are sound," he said. Davis Janowski can be reached at [email protected].