Mariner Wealth Advisors agreed to acquire The Financial Services Network, a hybrid RIA enterprise of LPL Financial with 400 financial advisors and $26 billion in client assets.
The deal,
The size of Mariner’s latest deal dwarfs its
Overland Park, Kansas-based Mariner started the platform in order “to free independent advisors from back-office responsibilities and return them to what they do best: providing world-class financial guidance to their clients,” Mariner President and CEO Marty Bicknell said in a statement. He praised “the depth of experience among the professionals at the network and the reach and expertise of LPL” as enabling Mariner to serve more planners beyond the platform’s current footprint of 33 practices and 66 advisors.
The Financial Services Network’s retired chairman, Jim Herrington, launched the firm in 1984 as a study group of advisors that later grew into an RIA and an LPL office of supervisory jurisdiction — the independent brokerage equivalent of a branch or complex of advisors who use it for administrative support, compliance, consulting and other services. With 50 employees specializing in those and other areas, the network is one of the biggest of
The deal with Mariner, which is going to rebrand the network as Mariner Advisor Network, will “accelerate the expansion of our network, broaden the scope of how we work with advisors and help advisors overcome the traditional impediments to growth,” Mercado said in a statement. He and the other principals of the firm will remain in their roles under Mariner.
The parties didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, which was first
Nearly 500 independent RIAs with 5,400 advisors use LPL as a custodian and brokerage,
“Through our partnership with the network and our new relationship with Mariner Wealth Advisors, we are helping advisors choose the business model, services, and technology that empower them to run a highly efficient and scalable practice,” LPL Managing Director Matthew Enyedi said in a statement.
After selling a minority stake to private Leonard Green last year, Mariner has emerged as one of the most active RIA acquirers in the industry. The firm has grown to $60 billion in client assets in its 16 years in business after launching with only $300 million.
Through the second quarter of 2022, Mariner announced at least seven different deals, placing it fourth in volume behind Creative Planning, Mercer Advisors and Beacon Pointe Advisors,
“These firms have business models centered around scale and use M&A to drive growth, each of them relying on a private equity backer to do so,” Echelon’s second-quarter deal report said. “The data point is also representative of the industry wide consolidation driven by a small number of incredibly active buyers.”
