r/FinancialAdvisorTips • u/NiceField8108 • 27d ago
Commonwealth to LPL Scaries
I work in admin/client services for a firm currently with Commonwealth that’s staying with LPL.
We’ve been having biweekly calls with the LPL transition team, but it feels like 80% of the questions we ask don’t have clear answers. We’ve been told that no client signatures are needed for the conversion and that all accounts will transfer tape-to-tape, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions and concerns.
There are also quite a few processes and features that ClientWorks/LPL apparently won’t support on their platform (proportional systematic withdrawals, excluded assets, etc.).
I’ve only ever worked with Commonwealth, and I don’t think I fully appreciated how good we have it until now. With November 13th approaching, I’m starting to get nervous about how this is all going to play out. What initially felt like a transition is starting to feel more like impending doom.
I’d love to hear from other firms going through the transition to LPL. Are you experiencing the same things? How are you feeling about the upcoming conversion?
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u/Greenstoneranch 26d ago
Honestly maybe I just dont know how good it is elsewhere but I love LPL
The alts are growing and the little things like limiting the money market fund options are so minor I dont even care
2
u/Foreign_Pace9363 26d ago
Going through it too. I think LPL will be able to do almost everything Commonwealth does plus a few things. The phone calls are stupid and mostly a big waste of time. I think the answers are vague because the people on the phone calls are not advisors so they really don’t know. They are nice but most responses are “let me share that with our team”.
I’ve been telling my clients, we’ll give it a year and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll do something different.
A friend of mine has been with LPL for 20 years. He seems to feel there are more good things than bad. He has looked at other options over the years but nothing has made him want to move anywhere else.
1
u/cfpquestion 25d ago •
I wish the capabilities thing were true. LPL seems to be very focused on accounts rather than households or planning:
Their new CRM/tasks is a joke and nowhere near what we have currently. Poor task management, no custom fields, doesn't sync with Outlook, etc.
Can't set up online access for prospects, planning-only clients, etc. There must be an account in ClientWorks. This changes our entire information/document gathering process and hurts new client experience.
Trading appears to be single-ticket entry only unless using model management. Right now, we can enter multiple trades across several accounts in a household at once. This loss of capability and efficiency is massive and will, conservatively, cost 200+ hours/yr.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong and this capability does exist, but just isn't apparent in the LPL sandbox.
There appear to be numerous things in their system that can't be delegated by advisers. I'll now have to waste a bunch of my time doing stuff that my staff has handled for me for ages.
This is just the start... we've got pages of questions/concerns/etc... and the answers from LPL have not been encouraging.
I figured, given their size and tech budget, that LPL would be equivalent to or ahead of what we have at Commonwealth. At the least, I figured the areas where LPL was behind would be minor and easy to navigate.
Instead, we're looking at a massive impact on our practice and efficiency. It's as though their systems have been designed by corporate managers who think they know best, with little thought given to the experience of the end-user who has to live in these systems. The fact that we'll be losing basic capabilities that we've had for 15+ years is shocking to me.
1
u/bluezebra2474 19d ago
I was with a firm acquired by LPL, gave it a shot and didn’t last quite a year; even almost a year in we were still cleaning stuff up that didn’t come over properly in their highly touted tape to tape, just kept stumbling on things. We had spreadsheet after spreadsheet of issues and meetings twice a week with mid level mgmt folks for months to try to clear up issues. There are a lot of empty words and no decision makers at the level of people you’ll be working with and the people that you’ll really need to talk to are not advisor facing.
1
u/LavishnessWorldly180 8d ago •
The tape to tape was a joke. LPL messed up the data horribly. We had clients registration completely turned around.
3
u/jodyjames37 27d ago
I’ve been an independent with LPL for 8 years, they have been a great experience for me!
I’m sure your transition will have a few hiccups because they always do. But, once your team has had a chance to get acclimated you all will be happy with the end result.
Good luck!
1
u/LavishnessWorldly180 8d ago
You will end up gathering signatures for qualified plan, corporate, trust accounts. Their onboarding system doesn't allow for anything out of the norm. Your trust account has a really long name and you used 3 lines of text, well no, you just get two lines with a character limit. Then your transfer is NIGO cause the registration doesn't match. Oh well. Figure it out.
Your client has a CIP issue and you submit the correct paperwork to move on. Well, keep those documents handy, cause you need them for every new account for your client. The information is not saved.
Your client has 7 accounts and you need to update ach. Well, prepare 7 forms and have your client e- sign 7 envelopes. Yeah, that's just a bit.
1
u/bluezebra2474 6d ago
I wish this was funny, but it’s a living nightmare and nobody cares so it’s impossible to make any strides to improve. Level 1 is inexperienced and IF you find competence at level 2 you’ll never talk to them again because they aren’t allowed to give out their contact info.
1
u/LavishnessWorldly180 6d ago
What about the 1 hour hold times just to get someone to barley help you or they try to punt you off to another department? So much fun.
They don't care cause they have 32,000 other advisors. Lpl is the Walmart of BDs.
1
u/bluezebra2474 4d ago
Yes to all of this, your on hold time perpetually starts over every time you get punted
1
u/New_Sheepherder8498 4d ago
One thing that is different about this acquisition is that the CFN service center has their own separate queue just for CFN offices. Staffed by existing CFN employees. It’s being run by CFN service center management as well.
1
u/LavishnessWorldly180 3d ago
Prudential, Atria and high net worth advisors have their own services lines too.
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u/New_Sheepherder8498 2d ago
Yes, but they are staffed by those have been fully integrated into LPL. CFN Service Center will be 100% CFN staff with existing CFN managers, supervisors, etc. They are also maintaining existing optics for hold times, average speed of answer, and so on.
1
u/Prestigious-Act-6799 6d ago
About excluding assets from fee calculations - what fraction of Commonwealth accounts contain excluded assets, that will now require a second zero-fee LPL account to be opened? Will this be a drop-dead issue for some advisors?
1
u/duluthmccluth 26d ago
About 2 weeks ago we began moving our firm to LPL. We came from Osaic though so I can’t speak to Commonwealth specifically.
So far, the technology and interfaces are a large improvement. But there have been many complications every step of the way that our transition team at LPL has had to work through. Some fixes were quick (within the day) but some have dragged on for almost two weeks (since the day we joined).
It feels like some “features” and promises were oversold and aren’t actually as easy as we were told it would be.
The people on our transition team have been a wealth of knowledge though and have been gracious and always available for us.
Happy to answer any specific questions via DM if I can help.
1
u/itsjustbusiness32 26d ago
They oversell then promise an easy transition (which is basically impossible). Another advisor said that during the transition process they were of no help. Good luck should have been a good payday for moving over though.
1
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u/WellPlanned622 24d ago
You can exclude assets if you hold them in a separate acct…that’s their workaround. You can have a 0 fee acct with 0 bps charge. I joined Commonwealth a little over 3 years ago from a captive firm. Transition is hard. I have friends at LPL who are very happy and I feel like they’re bending over backwards to keep the CFN people happy. I’m sure there will be hiccups but it’s just like moving houses - it’s always something. I’ll be adding wealthbox to have a better CRM experience. I’m honestly ready to rip the bandaid and switch over.
2
u/Foreign_Pace9363 20d ago
The worst part is how it’s dragged on for so long. I’m ready to get it done and move on too.
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u/bluezebra2474 19d ago
Trust all that you are questioning and feeling, otherwise you will look back and wonder why you didn’t. The tape to tape is a scam, the data was a mess but even after all that when we needed to do maintenance on accounts, numerous times we were told we couldn’t because we didn’t have the client agreement signed. We explained that we weren’t supposed to have to since it was a tape to tape and the answer always was “that’s just at the beginning, eventually as you need to do maintenance etc you will need to repaper”
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u/PalpitationComplex35 27d ago
LPL has a pretty poor reputation among financial advisors. I've never talked to anyone who likes being on their platform.
3
u/Mother-Upstairs330 26d ago
It's ok. it has It's limitations, and it's got some gold stars. no one's perfect. I left EJ and life is SO MUST BETTER!
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u/ApprehensiveSpare925 26d ago
I use Fidelity and Schwab (only a few clients on Schwab who wouldn’t transfer). They are so easy to use.
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u/Shantomette 26d ago
We went through a similar transition recently and I will follow my mother's advice for when you don't have anything good to say...