LPL’s Good Life Deal Continues ‘Sticky’ Acquisition Strategy
Call it the long game.
LPL Financial affiliates with a group of advisors, often with them working as an office of supervisory jurisdiction, takes a minority stake, and when the time is right, brings them in through a full acquisition.
It’s a long-term strategy that analysts say is starting to play out for the country’s largest independent broker/dealer as it seeks to keep adding scale and recurring revenue. Last week, it made its latest play for such an OSJ with the acquisition of $15 billion Good Life, based in Celebration, Fla.
While last year’s acquisition of rival IBD Commonwealth Financial Network has garnered many of the headlines for LPL recently, the acquisition of Good Life represents a long-term strategy that the firm will likely keep executing long beyond the dust settles from that mega M&A deal, according to Diamond Consultants CEO Louis Diamond.
“With Good Life in particular, it’s a continuation of their strategy,” Diamond said. “They have a number of these very large enterprises and platforms that are partnered, but not really, so this allows them to formalize things.”
Citywire first reported that San Diego-based LPL planned to fully acquire Good Life. An LPL spokesperson wrote via email that, “This deal represents a natural next step based on the shared vision between Good Life and LPL for how advisors can operate and grow their businesses.”
The spokesperson added that the move would not disrupt client work while allowing Good Life advisors to gain broader access to LPL’s wealth platform and services.
Diamond said that full acquisition of such groups can work for advisors as well, since they are already on LPL’s platform and custody with them.
“It’s also a way for founders or owners of the firms to take some chips off the table with a natural strategic acquirer that they are already operating with,” he said.
The deal comes shortly after LPL’s April acquisition of registered investment advisor Mariner’s advisor network, which had also been affiliated with LPL. That move brought in 367 advisors and $31 billion in assets, though 144 advisors joined as part of Private Advisor Group’s hybrid RIA.
LPL first acquired one of its branch offices back in 2022, according to Wealth Management reporting. In 2023, it acquired Financial Advocates, an Olympia, Wash.-based LPL OSJ overseeing about $20 billion in assets. In the meantime, it regularly takes minority stakes in affiliated firms, including Private Advisor Group last year.
Simon Hoyle, founder of recruiting and consulting firm RIA Choice, said LPL’s strategy of buying minority or majority stakes in advisor practices makes the business “sticky,” and is a good “method of retaining and building recurring revenue” as a publicly listed company with quarterly earnings.
“LPL knows bigger waves float bigger boats,” Hoyle said. “Getting the capital to OSJs and advisors has worked really well for them.”
Hoyle recalls that when LPL crossed the 10,000 advisor level in 2012, people questioned whether it could service an advisor pool as large as 20,000. Today, he noted, LPL is north of 32,000 advisors and still seems to be managing strong enough service to retain teams.
“Once you’ve got everything—your whole practice, your clients, over in a particular regulatory firm, and if you’re in a spot where you wanted to retire in the next few years … you can find benefit after benefit after benefit in staying with them,” he said. “But I don’t think any of these would be really big benefits if LPL didn’t do such a good job handling the service for such a large group of advisors.”
There has, however, been well-documented attrition among advisor teams following LPL’s full acquisition of Commonwealth last year. The deal has seen a number of Commonwealth teams depart for firms such as Cetera, Kestra and Arakadios, as well as to the RIA space either on their own or with aggregators such as Merit Financial Advisors.
According to sources, LPL recently became involved with a bidding process that included some RIA aggregators to retain a $2.1 billion Commonwealth team, Axial Financial Group. Axial is led by managing principals Paul Miller and Michael Marchese and includes a team of 29, most of whom are in Burlington, Mass., according to its website.
LPL has said it had expected some attrition and remains on track to retain 80% of the assets from the Commonwealth deal. It plans to convert the remaining advisors into the LPL platform in the fourth quarter of 2026.
That has led to recent staffing changes, according to the firm, by which some Commonwealth home staff have been reassigned, while others are being let go if they can’t find other opportunities at the firm.
“After more than a year of collaboration with Commonwealth, we’ve reached a key milestone in shaping our future organization,” the LPL spokesperson wrote. “Many Commonwealth employees have been mapped to roles in the combined company, and we encourage others to explore opportunities at LPL. Our focus remains on continuity for employees and a successful transition for advisors.”
When it comes to the Commonwealth deal, recruiter Hoyle is most interested in the assets, not the number of advisors.
“Not all of those producers that leave are huge producers,” he said. “And it’s client assets that pay the bills.”
In the meantime, Diamond expects LPL to continue acquiring partner firms. He said part of that strategy will benefit from the market for small IBDs not being “as liquid” as others in wealth management.
“The multiples they get aren’t the RIA multiples,” he said. “LPL is basically able to buy within less of an open market than if it were a full, banker-led process.”
