Most advisors leaving Commonwealth Financial Network following its purchase by LPL Financial continue to find familiar homes at rival independent broker-dealers.
But a few are striking out into the relatively unknown world of RIAs.
So far, it's been independent broker-dealers like Raymond James that have pulled in the
The latest to join is The Bridgeway Group, a nine-person team managing $900 million that had been with Commonwealth for 13 years in Pasadena, California. Matthew Dupon, a founding partner of Bridgeway, said he and his partners recognized that even staying at Commonwealth would have entailed a laborious transfer of clients and accounts to LPL.
"We knew we were going to have to make a transition one way," Dupon said. "We're going to have to use all new technology. So we figured: Well, let's look around and get it right the first time."
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A report last month from the recruiting firm Muriel Consulting and data tracker AdvizorPro found that of the nearly 700 advisors who left Commonwealth in 2025 following the sale announcement, only 36% joined an RIA. That trend continued this year, when only 27% of the advisors who had left Commonwealth by the time of Muriel's report had chosen the RIA route.
Shelby Nicholl, the founder of Muriel Consulting, said she thinks one reason relatively few departing Commonwealth advisors have landed at RIAs is that most had no objection to independent broker-dealers to begin with. Most who've left instead did so because of reluctance to join the much-larger LPL.
With its more than 32,000 advisors and $2.6 trillion in client assets, LPL dwarfs the roughly 2,900 advisors and $305 billion in assets Commonwealth had when it was acquired.
"And unfortunately, I think the Commonwealth leadership spoke so negatively about LPL in the years before the sale, it really felt like a left turn," Nicholl said. "I really think there were decades of negative language that LPL had to overcome."
LPL executives, for their part,
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Nicholl said departing Commonwealth advisors should look outside independent broker-dealers if for no other reason than the higher prices they can often obtain when they're looking to sell their practices and retire.
"When you are at an RIA, there are more options and more buyers," Nicholl said. "The gap is closing a little, but RIA buyers are accustomed to offering pricing at higher multiples than the IBD industry has been traditionally."
Muriel Consulting's report attributed the appeal of independent broker-dealers largely to the big transition checks they've dangled in front of Commonwealth advisors in their attempts recruit them. Some like Cetera have even
Like many advisors, Dupont said he and his partners were also looking for a firm that could lighten their administrative burdens and allow them to concentrate on existing and new clients.
"You know, we're well over $900 million in AUM," Dupon said. "So for us to grow at 15% a year, that's $140 million, and you've got to put that on every year. That's a lot of money to pull in."
David Wahlen, who oversees merger and acquisition deals at Merit, said the firm is competitive with its recruiting deals, although the details of its individual offers vary greatly from those typically offered by other firms. Independent broker-dealers, for instance, often provide advisors with upfront payments equal to a certain multiple of their previous year's revenue production. Merit, by contrast, entices new recruits in part
"The offers, I hope, are competitive," Wahlen said. "But I think it's very different to think about the flexibility and the opportunity that we have through both the equity that we use in our offers, but also that we are plucking leaders out of groups that join us that want more."
Dupon said another part of Merit's appeal was its range of custodial options for safeguarding client assets and completing trades. As part of the Commonwealth acquisition, LPL is moving Commonwealth advisors and clients over to its own custodial system.
Merit, by contrast, allows advisors to custody assets at both Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab. Dupon said he and his partners recognized that moving either to LPL or some other firm would force them to change custodians, involving a laborious process known as repapering.
"We like the option, the ability to use Fidelity or Schwab, depending on what clients prefer," Dupon said.
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Similar advantages are being touted by Independent Financial Partners, a hybrid brokerage-RIA that recently added to its stock of Commonwealth recruits with two more teams. Chris Hamm, the CEO and president of Independent Financial Partners, said wealth managers that use multiple outside firms as custodians give advisors another degree of the independence now desired by so many in the industry.
If newly recruited advisors eventually grow disenchanted with their new home, they can most likely move somewhere else having to repaper and draw up new custodial agreements.
"I think it's just another layer of independence or perceived independence where they're totally tied in with the bigger firms," said Hamm, whose firm uses Fidelity, Schwab, Pershing and SEI as custodians.
Hamm said he doesn't think the distinctions among RIAs, independent broker-dealers, hybrids and other types of firms were particularly meaningful to the two former Commonwealth teams that recently joined Independent Financial Partners. Like many ex-Commonwealth representatives, the advisors at Van Horn Financial Services in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Severn Financial Advisors in Annapolis, Maryland, obtain the majority of their revenue from fees generated from assets under management.
The firms will be bringing their collective $400 million in client assets and 11 team members to a more familiar setting than they would encounter at the much-larger LPL. Independent Financial Partners has roughly $21 billion and 288 advisors.
Hamm said the firm's size helps ensure he and his partner can be nimble in their responses to advisors' suggestions for improvement.
"So we pay revenue three times a month, whereas other broker-dealers pay one or two times a month," he said. "And when we build their accounts, we pay them right when we receive the fees, whereas some firms hold on to those fees for a couple months just to get the float."
Dupon confirmed that LPL's size was a big consideration for him and his partners. Part of the appeal of joining Merit was the opportunity it offered to build his business as part of a firm that's on its own upward trajectory. Since its founding in 1998, Merit has grown through 61 acquisitions and other deals to have more than $30 billion client assets and 55 offices throughout the U.S.
Of course, when advisors are looking for a new firm, word of mouth always exert a big pull. Nick Wilkins, a former Commonwealth advisor with his colleagues at Chicago-based Blueprint Wealth Advisors, said he knew Dupon only by name
Yet their shared Commonwealth connection made him a natural person for Dupon and his team to consult on their own possible move.
"I would just say we've had more events in the last nine months than we've had in our careers in terms of the marketing people putting on high net worth events," Wilkins said. "We're going to do a tax presentation. Setting it all up, obviously we need to get butts in the seats. But it's way more than I ever thought it would be."
