LPL Financial has designs on helping financial advisors take advantage of the shared economy.
No the firm isn’t getting into the ride-sharing business. But the firm does plan to provide financial advisors with a service that helps them turn some of their fixed and perhaps low-value expenses -- such as an assistant who opens client accounts -- into variable expenses -- a virtual assistant provided by LPL Financial.
With this new service, financial advisors will have the ability to outsource or eliminate office functions that don’t necessarily contribute to growth, according to Dan Arnold, the president and CEO of LPL Financial. It’s the “uberization” of running a financial advice business, he said today in a press conference at the LPL Financial 2017 Focus conference in Boston.
This pool of resources, a new digital age secretarial pool of sorts, will be located in the firm’s Charlotte and San Diego offices, and advisors would pay a fee to use the service on a per use basis, according to a spokesman.
“It will help them lower their costs associated with their overhead,” said Arnold. “It takes friction out of the system” and it enables advisors to allocate their time to the highest-yielding activities.
Arnold said advisors will be able to outsource a wide variety of services and functions, from opening new accounts to processing account transfer paperwork to responding to client requests. “Anyway, the advisor would leverage the traditional assistant,” he said.
Arnold also said the firm is unveiling in the coming months a digital app that will provide clients of advisors with a “scorecard” that measures the performance a client’s investment portfolio against his or her personal goals. “We should be tracking your progress toward whatever those things are,” he said. “If you tell me that you want A, B and C to be accomplished, then we ought to be able to help you (the end) client on that journey.”
This “goals-based” scored will also show a client’s progress toward their long-term goals through smaller goals, according to Arnold. That way, it increases the likelihood of the client achieving a goal with a 20-year time horizon. Arnold also said the new app will require that advisors gather and document data that, among other things, truly uncovers their clients’ goals.