LPL wraps up NPH adviser move, declines to say whether it reached revenue goal

LPL Financial said Monday it had wrapped up its acquisition of advisers from National Planning Holdings, but declined to say whether it had reached its goal of moving over 70% of the revenue generated by the network's advisers. Last August, LPL announced it had acquired NPH for $325 million from Jackson National, an insurance company. NPH consisted of four broker-dealers with 3,200 advisers, $120 billion in client assets, and $909 million in 2016 revenue, according to InvestmentNews data. Since then, LPL has been transitioning advisers over in stages, two firms at a time. At the start of the month, LPL stated that it expected to hit its target of moving over 70% of the revenue from NPH. A spokesman for LPL, Jeff Mochal, said in an email Monday that the company had no update on the status of hitting its 70% revenue target. Competition for NPH advisers from LPL's competitors has been fierce, with a number of firms issuing press releases to tout signing up groups of NPH advisers. On Monday, LPL announced the names of large adviser practices that had moved from two firms, Invest Financial Corp. and SII Investments Inc., this month. They consisted of five teams of advisers with $1 billion or more in client assets and nine groups with assets of $500 million to $999 million. That appears to be an improvement over an earlier announcement regarding NPH advisers moving to LPL. In December, when the company highlighted large groups of advisers from two other NPH firms, Investment Centers of America Inc. and National Planning Corp., it said four teams with $1 billion or more in client assets had joined and seven teams with $500 million to $999 million had moved. One former LPL recruiter said that adding advisers from NPH was an uneven process. "From what I've heard, they were on track to do the 70% of the Investment Centers and NPC advisers, but I don't know about SII," said Chris DeFrank, managing director of Bridgemark Strategies, a recruiting firm that has worked with NPH advisers. Mr. DeFrank was a recruiter for LPL for almost 20 years. "They could be a little shy of the goal there," he said. "The advisers at SII were a different ilk. It was a smaller firm, and I don't know how many wanted to go to a firm the size and scope of LPL." In a conference call February 1, LPL senior management sounded confident of reaching their target of NPH advisers. "Overall, we estimate production transfer of approximately 70%, with EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] equivalent to around $85 million," said LPL CEO Dan Arnold.