LPL to keep trolling bank broker market

After a busy year-and-a-half striking deals to provide retail brokerage and advisory services to banks and credit unions, LPL Financial will continue to fish in the market of financial institutions, as it is known in the brokerage industry.

Since 2020, LPL has signed three major agreements with banks and a credit union. Two banks, BMO Harris Financial Advisors and M&T Bank Corp., have already moved financial advisers onto LPL's platform, with CUNA Brokerage Services Inc. to be finished next year. In total, those three retail banks and credit unions represent more than 800 advisers and brokers and about $70 billion in client assets.

And LPL is still eyeing the financial institutions market, Dan Arnold, the company's CEO, said in a conference call Thursday to discuss third-quarter earnings.

"Looking at the large financial institutions marketplace, we onboarded BMO Harris and M&T earlier this year and are applying the insights from those experiences to make our institutional offering even more robust and differentiated," Arnold said. "This innovation and marketplace momentum are helping drive a solid pipeline with a growing number of prospects."

"We're excited about the opportunities across both the traditional bank outsourcing markets — that's your bank and credit union — and then the new large institution market," he said. "We see our pipeline continuing to grow and without giving specifics, we have good confidence that we can continue to see the financial institution space as an ongoing sustainable and multiyear contributor to our organic growth."

LPL doesn't buy the banks it works with; rather, it serves as the back office for each bank's wealth management business.

Meanwhile, LPL continued to add financial advisers, and at the end of September reported a head count of 19,627. That's an increase of 513, or 3%, when compared to the prior quarter and 2,459, or 14%, compared to the same period last year.

LPL added approximately 280 advisers from Waddell & Reed in the third quarter, according to the company. During the quarter, LPL moved the remainder of $71 billion in Waddell & Reed client assets to its platform. LPL said at the end of last year that it was buying the wealth management business of Waddell & Reed as part of a larger, complicated transaction.