"Time is precious. So it is important to lead a meaningful life." This lesson was delivered with tremendous power to over 5,200 attendees at our firm's annual focus 2014 conference, held recently in San Diego for our clients, sponsors, employees and guests. The messengers on this occasion were Bob Woodruff, the former ABC anchor and journalist who sustained life-threatening injuries on assignment in Afghanistan, and his wife, Lee, who led their family through a long and difficult recovery.
Their profound remarks served to underscore the perennial message from our conference, which is a reminder that financial advisers' work is suffused with meaning. Advisers help clients manage some of the most important and profoundly personal aspects of their lives: their personal finances, assets and wealth, which are the fruits and rewards of a life's labors, as well as the protections against life's inevitable setbacks. The question for financial advisers and financial institutions is not how to find meaning in their work, but rather how to make sure that more of their time and energy can be dedicated to those aspects of their work that are most meaningful. Viewed in that context, the work of an entire firm built on delivering objective financial advice is about unlocking each adviser's full value, allowing him or her to focus on what matters most.
Achieving this goal is more complex and more important than ever, as the demand on advisers' time has never been greater. That starts with the current regulatory environment, which our chairman and CEO, Mark Casady, calls the toughest he's seen in his 30 years in the industry. Complying with the regulations is crucial for every adviser in America. The challenge is how to allow advisers to do so at the same time that we enable them to spend their precious time serving clients. Nobody has the perfect answer yet, but certainly a combination of enhanced technology, expanded support systems and personnel, combined with tireless work with the regulators – who share our goal of seeing investors be well-served – are the right elements. That's what we are focused on delivering at LPL, and we are confident it will yield positive results for our advisers and institutions.
Practice management is another area ripe for innovations that can unlock more value from advisers. Every minute an adviser spends managing paper, moving data files from one platform to another, sending or receiving faxes and otherwise operating without the benefit of modern, integrated systems is simply a waste. Every adviser has his or her own approach for maximizing efficiency, but the goal should be the same – make the management of the core functions of a practice so seamless and easy-to-execute that the technology and operations blend into the background and the focus of the adviser, institution and their administrative staffs can remain locked onto the needs of, and relationship with, their clients. The announcement of ClientWorks, LPL's online client relationship management platform, as well as a new relationship with Redtail Technology that will provide advisers with access to Redtail's suite of innovative CRM tools, are both part of our effort to deliver on that vision. Certainly, even more innovation will emerge in this space, and it should be welcomed.
Perhaps the most important way our entire industry can better enable advisers to deliver value to investors is to make sure we understand their concerns, frustrations and suggestions by developing new ways to listen. At LPL, this is something we prioritized last year by asking a group of financial advisers and program managers, both from independent practices and institutions, to serve as an advisory panel. This panel has proven to be an invaluable way to listen and learn, as together we explore and implement ways to continually improve the quality and range of services and support we provide to make LPL's interactions smarter, simpler and more personal.
Listening and taking action become easy when we remind ourselves that at the end of the day, every company and individual who operates in this industry contributes to something truly meaningful. When an adviser sits down with a client and they explore the client's life goals and how to achieve them, it is an act of profound service. As Bob Woodruff and so many others can remind us, life is indeed short, and time is precious. To the extent we can help our advisers and their clients spend more time on the things in life that matter most, we contribute not only to a better industry, but a more financially secure country.
Robert J. Moore is president of LPL Financial.
