LPL Financial holdings Inc. continues to maintain its guidance that it’s on track to reach its goal of hanging onto the advisors and assets of Commonwealth Financial Network, the high-end boutique broker-dealer and registered investment advisor it acquired last year for $2.7 billion in cash.
Since LPL announced at the end of March 2025, the company has steadfastly maintained its target of retaining 90% of the firm’s close to $300 billion in assets.
“In terms of asset retention, we are in the mid-80s today, and we continue to track towards our target of 90% retention,” said CEO Rich Steinmeier during a conference call Thursday afternoon with analysts to discuss first quarter earnings. “As for Commonwealth, the integration is progressing well.”
It hasn’t been an easy task for LPL. Competing wealth management firms have been doing their best to recruit away Commonwealth advisors; the firm had about 3,000 financial advisors when LPL said it was buying it, and competitors like Raymond James Financial, Cambridge Investment Research and others have lured away dozens of teams.
Meanwhile, with much of the effort to convince Commonwealth advisors to stay put complete, LPL is able to use its army of recruiters to focus on the competition again and convince advisors from those firms to move to LPL, Steinmeier noted.
LPL has long been the leading recruiter in the independent broker-dealer industry.
“Given our strong progress with Commonwealth, we're increasingly focusing our recruiting efforts on external opportunities,” Steinmeier said.
Usually a recruiting powerhouse, LPL Financial’s recruited assets for the first three months of the year were $17 billion, down 55% from a year ago.
It also saw a dip of 34 net-new advisors during the first quarter compared to the final three months of 2025, leaving its financial advisor headcount at 32,144.
“While organic growth was weak, this was due to a shift in recruiters to Commonwealth and was expected,” wrote William Blair analyst Jeff Schmitt in a note to investors. “The good news is many of these recruiters have pivoted back to the market and the pipeline is now at a record level, which suggests organic growth should pick up by the back half.”
LPL Financial reported total client assets increased 30% year-over-year to $2.3 trillion, with advisory assets increasing 42% year-over-year to $1.4 trillion.
Advisory assets as a percentage of total client assets increased to 59.5%, up from 54.5% a year ago, and total organic net new assets were $21 billion, representing 4% annualized growth.
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