Latest salvo in Ameriprise, LPL trade war is charge of a data breach

The long-running dispute between LPL Financial Holdings Inc. and Ameriprise Financial Inc. took a sharp turn this week when LPL on Monday revealed that Ameriprise had informed former customers, now with LPL, that their accounts were in danger of being hacked by financial advisors who left Ameriprise years ago. 

Such data breach notices are among the most sensitive communications firms can have with clients, as customers are deathly afraid of losing control of their accounts to outside compute hackers.

Ameriprise has targeted LPL in at least four complaints sinch January 2024, alleging its competitor had unfairly hired its financial advisors. It’s a string of cases of two industry giants fighting for financial advisors at a time when the entire wealth management industry is in flux.

LPL works with 29,000 financial advisors and Ameriprise 11,000. The latter's financial advisors, however, historically have produced more annual revenue than those at LPL.

In a court filing from Monday seeking a temporary restraining order, LPL called Ameriprise’s notices to clients “false and defamatory.”

On April 8, Ameriprise “sent a purported ‘Notice of Data Breach’ to thousands of (as-yet unidentified) LPL account holders informing them that, years ago, their advisors accessed their information without authorization in connection with their transition from Ameriprise to LPL,” according to the filing, which was filed in federal court in San Diego.

“Ameriprise’s notice further asserts that these account holders are now years later, at risk of, and should monitor for, unauthorized transactions in their account and identity theft,” according to the filing. “Account holders are plainly not at risk from their own LPL financial advisors.”

“Once again, LPL is trying to shift the narrative away from its misconduct instead of focusing on what matters most - protecting clients and their sensitive data,” a spokesperson for Ameriprise wrote in an email. “Let’s be clear—the steps we took to inform impacted individuals their data had been compromised were completely lawful and contemplated by a federal court order to which LPL agreed.”

“Ameriprise has sunk to a new low by sending misleading data breach notices to investors whose advisors left Ameriprise for LPL,” according to an email from an LPL spokesperson. “These notices misrepresent routine account transitions and falsely claim the advisors mishandled client personal information.”

“This is a blatant and desperate attempt to instill fear and distrust in these investors and tarnish the reputation of their advisors,” according to the LPL spokesperson.

According to LPL’s filing, Ameriprise’s notice to its former clients states: “Your former Ameriprise Financial advisor left Ameriprise for LPL Financial during the period 2018-2020. In connection with that transition, your former advisor shared certain confidential personal information about you and your account(s) that exceeded the limited scope of information your former advisor was permitted to use for transition purposes.”