LPL quit FSI after two sides couldn’t agree on membership discount

The Financial Services Institute can no longer claim LPL Financial, the country’s largest independent broker dealer, as a member, and it may be because the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement over dues.
LPL was looking for FSI, the leading lobbying group for independent B-Ds, to give it some wiggle room on its membership fee, said Amy Webber, FSI’s chairwoman and president of Cambridge Investment Research Inc.
LPL “was asking for a more inexpensive membership,” she said. When FSI said it wouldn’t budge on its price, LPL did not rejoin, she said of the negotiations that took place last fall.
Ms. Webber added that FSI wished LPL well and would welcome it back. She added that she did not know of any other large firms considering breaking with FSI.
Small firms can pay as little as $500 annually to join FSI, and large firms as much as $175,000, according to an industry executive who asked not to be named. With 14,000 registered reps and advisers, LPL’s FSI annual membership would presumably have cost $175,000.
LPL advisers can still buy an individual membership for $179 a year.
Earlier this month, LPL said it opened a dedicated office in Washington for its team of government relations executives. Previously, those executives did not have a dedicated office.
“Leaving FSI was not because we didn’t have the money to pay, it was a reallocation of resources,” Peggy Ho, executive vice president, chief of staff, legal, head of government relations.
LPL attempted to find a way to stay members of the FSI and scale back its commitment, she said. “We couldn’t find a way to make that work.”
LPL has had a consistent focus on policy in Washington, Ms. Ho noted, with former president of national sales Bill Dwyer and ex-general counsel Stephanie Brown, along with Mr. Casady, traveling frequently to Washington to meet with lawmakers and regulators. A couple of years ago, the firm decided to build a dedicated team in Washington to coincide with the work of its senior executives, Ms. Ho said.
“As we developed and grew we worked a lot with FSI,” she said. “We felt the resources could be applied elsewhere. We will continue to try to work with FSI, although we are no longer a member.”
At the top of the LPL lobbying group’s priority list are plans to incentivize saving for retirement and to get small businesses to put plans in place, said Ms. Ho. The group is also focused on issues involving protecting senior citizens, she said.
LPL has been on a stricter budget lately.
LPL Financial CEO Mark Casady last October said the firm intended to reduce its rate of expense growth in 2016. Subsequently, the company eliminated as many as 70 jobs and said it was delaying raises to employees next year by at least six months.
(See: LPL Financial’s problems keep piling up )