Financial advisors managing a combined $312 million in client assets have changed their broker-dealers, as LPL Financial lost one practice but gained another firm at a critical time for its recruiting efforts.
The No. 1 IBD picked up Ellis Financial Group, a three-member team with $170 million in client assets, from Lucia Capital Group. Meanwhile, Merrick Financial Group, another three-member team with $142 million, left LPL for Kestra Financial.
Two other firms also chose Kestra over LPL in moves unveiled in March, as Kestra added
LPL grabbed a team
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The firm left Kestra for PKS as part of the move as increasingly large breakaways fuel the independent movement.
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The No. 13 IBD has added 183 advisors through its recruiting efforts in the past two years.
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At least three dual practices with nearly $1.5 billion in client assets have left since the No. 1 IBD unveiled the new guidelines.
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John Ellis, Jennifer Baker and John Ellis, Jr. of Ellis Financial joined LPL on May 16, according to FINRA BrokerCheck, moving the team’s advisory assets to the firm’s corporate RIA. Merrick partners Eric Moore and Michael Blake and associate Allison Hudson exited LPL on Feb. 21 for Kestra.
“We founded our firm with the unwavering commitment to provide clients a top-quality level of service,” Moore said in a statement, adding that they knew Kestra’s “robust technology platform and practice enrichment tools would ensure our clients are receiving superior service day in and day out.”
Neither LPL nor Lucia, a San Diego-based IBD listing 15 advisors on its website, responded to requests for comment on the departures from their firms. Merrick also didn’t respond to inquiries, and John Ellis said he was not immediately available to discuss the practice’s move.
Merrick, which is based in Merrick, New York on Long Island, focuses on serving active and retired public employees in law enforcement. Moore, a 20-year veteran of the industry, launched the firm in 2006, and Blake joined in 2013 after a 27-year career in the New York Police Department.
The practice placed its advisory assets with the corporate RIA at Austin, Texas-based Kestra, where the firm’s roughly 1,800 advisors
The company is “dedicated to empowering sophisticated wealth management firms like Merrick,” Daniel Schwamb, Kestra’s senior vice president for business development, said in a statement.
Ellis, which operates out of an office in San Diego, had spent six years with Lucia after three years with First Allied Securities, FINRA BrokerCheck shows. Most of the firm’s clients come from San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento, California, or Seattle and Tacoma, Washington and are in retirement or close to it, according to LPL.
LPL’s profits
Morrissey, the president of LPL’s business development division, had
