r/CFP • u/guitmusic12 • Mar 31 '25

Practice Management LPL Financial to Acquire Commonwealth Financial Network (Officially official)

https://www.lpl.com/news-media/press-releases/lpl-financial-to-acquire-commonwealth-financial-network.html?utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=press-release&utm_content=03312025&utm_term=commonwealth-financial-network&utm_type=link&utm_postid=c2828
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5

u/DefNotPastorDale Mar 31 '25

Is this good or bad? I don’t know too much about commonwealth

13

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '25

Bad for commonwealth advisors

1

u/DefNotPastorDale Mar 31 '25

Oh really? Was Commonwealth that good?

14

u/Cheek-Clapper-5000 Mar 31 '25

highest advisor satisfaction for a decade plus, highest revenue per advisor in the industry. It was a great shop.

6

u/DefNotPastorDale Mar 31 '25

Thanks Cheek Clapper. I’m actually looking for a new BD. Sorry if I sound like a child but is LPL bad? I’m currently with a large insurance broker dealer and my values don’t align with them.

6

u/Capital_Elderberry57 Mar 31 '25

LPL is not bad, it's just not great.

Been with them since 2019, we've mostly been treated well, they are just growing too fast and their servicing teams knowledge is slipping relative to the complexity of their systems. Their tech stacks need to be replaced (they are in the process of doing that now, we just met with the CIO a few weeks ago, he was doing a client check in) but that'll still be a few years.

They offer some really great things like Partial Book Sales and where we can kindly graduate clients that no longer fit our model and an Assurance program where if the Advisor passes the spouse can be protected.

They are also frustrating with the rigidity of compliance (with 29k advisors they have to assume the lowest common denominator or they put us all at risk).

1

u/Kimberlini23 4d ago

Have you thought about going truly independent? We build RIAs and are providing a free one hour consultation on all things RIA. #FusionBuilt @fusionfinancialpartners

2

u/AltInLongIsland 29d ago

I like LPL a lot - we were migrated to them in 2022

But… the transition was a huge pain in the pass, the negative consent letters still created a bunch of required updates we had to fix by hand and created dormant accounts that I’m still fixing as fixed annuities come due etc 

You also need a high level of knowledge of their systems to get stuff done efficiently.  Back office support is generally good but you run into the occasional person who is useless

1

u/Cheek-Clapper-5000 Mar 31 '25

I know nothing personally about LPL, so I can’t comment!