A San Diego–based team led by financial advisor Chad Taylor is the latest firm to join LPL Financial’s Strategic Wealth Services model, the seventh team to come in under that premium affiliation model since it was launched a year ago. Taylor, whose team manages about $215 million in client assets, joins from UBS Financial Services and will operate as Seapoint Wealth Advisors.
“I’m going from being a W2 employee to the owner of a company where I have more control on how we manage clients and accounts,” Taylor said in a statement. “This move fulfills my goal of creating a firm that provides a higher level of service where we can offer advice customized to each client’s specific situation.”
LPL launched Strategic Wealth Services last April to help the firm lift advisors out of the wirehouses and regional firms. It’s designed to take some of the more "entrepreneurial" tasks involved in starting and running a practice off these advisors’ shoulders. The firm tapped Kimberly Sanders, who formerly oversaw business consulting at Schwab, to lead the division. The firm now has a total of seven teams, 20 advisors and $2.6 billion in assets in SWS.
Of those advisors that have already moved into the model, they were able to transition 95% of their client assets within 60 days, said Sanders.
“All independent advisors—they need to manage their space, their brand and the furniture,” Sanders said. “They have to hire all the vendors to do their marketing, and to do their HR and payroll. That’s the normal experience of an independent advisor. For a Strategic Wealth Services advisor, they’re coming over and for no out-of-pocket cost, we’re managing their entire turnkey office. We’re doing the general contractor work to make sure the space is built out; we’re helping to negotiate those leases for them; help making sure they’ve got all the furniture in place, the brand is built, the identity is built, all of their marketing collateral, and their social media profiles. All of that’s ready to go on their behalf.”
Rather than take a haircut from the advisors' payout, LPL charges a service fee for those who come into the model. The costs of furniture and building out the office are paid out of the advisor’s transition assistance.
“It becomes a really expensive proposition to break away and launch your own business,” Sanders said. “For Strategic Wealth Services, most of that is covered outright, and we’re just paying for it as part of their service fee.”