LPL announces another round of price cuts at its corporate RIA

LPL Financial continues to cut fees for advisers who custody advisory assets on the firm's corporate RIA platform, this time targeting smaller advisers with $25 million to $50 million in assets. The company on Thursday said that, come next January, it will charge a flat 8 basis-point fee to advisers with $25 million to $50 million in assets held in custody on the proprietary Strategic Asset Management (SAM) platform, one of LPL's longest running and most successful investment platforms. "The change is intended to make it possible for more advisers to take advantage of flat basis-point pricing," the company said in a statement. Thursday's announcement follows other similar moves by the company. This year, LPL cut administrative fees for advisers with $50 million to just under $100 million in assets on the SAM platform to 5 basis points, lopping off 2.5 basis points in fees. Advisers with $100 million or more in SAM assets are now paying just 3 basis points for the administrative fee. The move to bolster LPL's corporate RIA platform comes at an important time for the firm. In August, it announced a change in policy that would require new adviser recruits to custody their first $50 million in assets at LPL, a move that some branch managers saw as a threat to their ability to attract advisers. LPL is focused on recruiting, and the reduction in fees on its corporate RIA could make it more attractive to some advisers. LPL last August bought the four National Planning Holdings IBDs and many on Wall Street and the financial advice industry are keeping a close eye on LPL's potential ambitions to buy rival Cetera Financial Group. It now has 15,210 brokers and advisers. Meanwhile, in July LPL expects to add a mutual fund no-transaction-fee network to its strategic wealth management platform. It will offer a share class of mutual funds from selected fund sponsors. Several fund managers are finalizing agreements, including: AB Funds, Columbia Threadneedle, J.P. Morgan, Legg Mason, MFS, Natixis, John Hancock, Oppenheimer and Putnam. Additional fund sponsors will be added in the future.