LPL and Independent Financial Partners lose $10 billion retirement group

Retirement Benefits Group, a multibillion dollar advisory group focused on defined-contribution plans, is leaving LPL Financial and Independent Financial Partners early next year, according to a source familiar with the plans.

RBG — which had $10 billion and 55 retirement plan advisers as of year-end 2017, according to InvestmentNews data — is joining another registered investment adviser, Resources Investment Advisors Inc., in January 2019, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.

Retirement Benefits Group has advisory assets with both LPL’s corporate registered investment adviser and Independent Financial Partners, and it uses LPL as its broker-dealer.

Independent Financial Partners, a mega-hybrid RIA with more than 500 advisers, this year announced it would be leaving LPL in 2019 to create its own broker-dealer. That has led advisers using the IFP platform — including Retirement Benefits Group — to weigh their options.

Resources Investment Advisors uses the broker-dealer Triad Advisors, one of the five independent brokerage firms that is part of Ladenburg Thalmann’s network. Resources has roughly $10.4 billion in assets, with $9 billion of the total coming from retirement plans, according to its most recent Form ADV filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Spokespeople for Retirement Benefits Group, Independent Financial Partners and LPL weren’t immediately available to comment. Vincent Morris, president of Resources Investment Advisors, declined to comment.

Resources Investment Advisors had been affiliated with LPL until early 2017, when it moved to Triad Advisors. LPL, however, recently was able to retain a $14 billion retirement group, Sheridan Road Financial, that currently custodies with IFP but is starting up its own registered investment adviser.

LPL, the largest independent broker-dealer in the U.S., also has seen two heads of its Retirement Partners group — Bill Beardsley and David Reich — leave the unit in a little over a year. The group is now run by Bryan Hodgens.