Home > Blogs > Technology Changes Afoot at LPL - By Joel Bruckenstein, CFP®

Technology Changes Afoot at LPL - By Joel Bruckenstein, CFP®

Submitted by Technology Tools for Today on August 7th, 2015


LPL has done a considerable amount of work laying the technology foundation for the future, but much of the work was not apparent to advisors. Joel Bruckenstein provides his thoughts after attending the LPL Focus Conference.

LPL Financial is difficult to overlook. They serve over 14,000 financial advisors. In addition, their serves Institution Services arm serves approximately 700 regional and community banks and credit unions. Institution Services also provides clearing services to approximately 4,000 advisors affiliated and licensed with insurance companies through a unique outsourcing arrangement.

If you would have asked me as recently as 2 ½ years ago, I would have told you that LPL had one of the worst technology platforms among the major broker/dealers. Around that time, LPL hired Victor Fetter as their Chief Information Officer. Speaking at his first LPL Conference two years ago, Fetter vowed to a modern, intuitive technology platform. At that time, he described to me the technology overhaul as a journey, one that would take time, but one that would progress in a rationale progression.

Fast forward two years to the 2015 LPL Focus Conference, and it is readily apparent that the changes Fetter discussed two years ago are well underway.  At the conference opening session, LPL CEO Mark Casady told the 7,000 attendees that LPL was 2 ½ years into a significant change at the firm. He said LPL’s aim was to support advisor success through simplicity. He cited three areas of concentration, with technology at the top of the list. The others were risk/compliance and service. Since our focus is on technology, we’ll confine our comments to that subject.

Casady says that in prior years, advisors often told him about additions they wanted to the technology platform. He says that in about 50% of the cases, the platform already provided the technology that advisors wanted; they just couldn’t find it because the system was too cumbersome and complex. What he failed to mention is that oftentimes when they did have the feature, it was inferior to what the competition offered, or it suffered from the same poor design as the platform did. Thankfully, LPL is addressing all of these issues.

Last year, LPL had done a considerable amount of work laying the technology foundation for the future, but much of the work was not apparent to advisors. The initial work involved building the infrastructure that would support all that was to come in the future. LPL did demonstrate an early version of their next generation ClientWorks platform, but it was clearly a work in progress at that time, and it was not available to advisors.   

Now, ClientWorks, the enhanced, integrated cloud based technology solution for advisors is starting to take shape. Currently, approximately 300 advisors are participating in the pilot program, and more advisors will be added on a regular basis going forward. Early indications are that ClientWorks will achieve the firm’s goal of simplicity. ClientWorks has a clean, intuitive interface, but if anything, it is more powerful than its predecessor in the sections of the application that have been fully rolled out. Its sorting and filtering capabilities are top notch.  It also does away with some of the most annoying aspects of BranchNet such as the ugly yellow screen, the inability to use BranchNet with many popular web browsers, and the inability to use the browser’s back button.

ClientWorks is mobile friendly. Its responsive design means that is will optimize its display based upon the device the user is accessing it through.

Unfortunately, at this time some functionality has not been moved to the new system, so advisors who are early adopters of ClientWorks will still need to use BranchNet for certain functionality, trading being perhaps the most obvious example of this. 

Trading has been enhanced, but the update was long overdue. According to one presentation, it used to take an estimated 45 hours for an advisor with 600 accounts to see our of one security position and replace it with two other securities. That’s because in the past, you had to trade each security for each account separately. The same set of transactions now takes approximately seven minutes due to the addition of block trading and various other trading enhancements. While this is great news for LPL advisors, the obvious question is “What took you so long?” This functionality has been available to most advisors for years.

LPL has upgraded their rebalancing technology. Formerly, it was powered by ASI. It is now powered by FolioDynamics. According to LPL, the new system “blows ASI out of the water”. Although LPL does not yet offer asset location or tax sensitive rebalancing optimization, Fetter says that these enhancements are on the technology roadmap.

LPL recently inked an integration deal with Redtail CRM, and judging from the reaction in the exhibit hall, the move was extremely well received. Throughout the conference, the Redtail booth appeared to be the most heavily trafficked one. There was a constant crowd looking to learn more about the product and to sign up. Currently, the Redtail integration is a one way integration: ClientWorks data to Redtail, but a bi-directional integration is in pilot now, with more enhancements to the integration scheduled for future release. Perhaps the greatest challenge for Redtail in the coming months will be their ability to onboard LPL advisors fast enough to satisfy demand.

There have been numerous other technology improvements over the last 18 months. The reporting solution has been improved, as has tax processing. The client portal was totally revamped last year. There is a new email platform hosted by LPL.

During the conference, LPL announced the launch of their affinity program. This program makes a wide variety of technology solutions available to advisors at discounted prices. 

LPL also announced that they have begun work with a third party on developing a robo advice solution, one that is intended to complement the advisor’s core business. Details were limited, so it is not clears exactly what the new platform will look like, nor is it clear to what extend the technology will be driven by a third party, or how much of it will be based upon existing LPL systems.

Some pessimists would argue that LPL’s technology upgrade is moving too slowly, but we do not hold that view. Given the enormity of the task facing Fetter when he took over the technology reins at LPL, we think that a tremendous amount has been accomplished over the last two years. That being said, much work still remains to be done, however, if LPL can accomplish the same degree of momentum over the next two years as they have in the past two, their advisors will be richly rewarded!

Website Design For Financial Services Professionals | Copyright 2025 AdvisorWebsites.com. All rights reserved