Scott LoPresti and Dean DiPierro, financial advisors managing about $500 million in client assets in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., have joined Radnor, Pa.-based Lincoln Financial Network (LFN), the retail wealth management affiliate of Lincoln Financial Group, the firm said.

LoPresti and DiPierro are registered with LFN’s independent broker-dealer Lincoln Financial Advisors (LFA). John DiMonda, senior vice president and head of LFA, said in a news release announcing the affiliation that it would strengthen his firm’s presence in New York’s Hudson Valley, where LoPresti and DiPierro are based.

“Scott and Dean bring a wealth of financial planning experience to our firm and a shared commitment to providing advice and guidance that helps clients secure their financial futures,” DiMonda said. “We’re excited to welcome these two high-caliber financial professionals into the LFA family ... while providing Scott and Dean [with] the resources, scale and backing of a Fortune 200 company. We look forward to supporting them as they grow their business, evolve their practice and serve their clients.”

LoPresti and DiPierro, who bring three decades of combined financial planning experience to the new partnership, were formerly with LPL Financial.

“Thanks to Lincoln, we have a dedicated team that took the time to understand our business and then give us the attention and support we need to help grow,” LoPresti said in the news release. “The resources we now have are in lock-step alignment with the strategic direction of our business, and most importantly ensure our clients are fully supported.”

LoPresti said he began working in the financial services industry in 2005 after having worked the past nine years in the telecommunications industry, and originally founded his practice with a focus on physicians.

“I worked as a one-person practice until 2016, when I realized that my practice had grown to a level where I could no longer manage it on my own,” he said in an email.

LoPresti said that since he had known DiPierro for many years, and because he also worked in the financial services field, LoPresti asked him to join the practice as a partner.

“It has evolved over time to where it consists of a good number of business owners and some everyday family business, but our niche today is primarily the high-net-worth individual looking for safe, consistent income and tax-advantaged investment planning,” LoPresti said.

LoPresti said that neither he nor DiPierro were actively seeking a new partner firm, but based on a past relationship with Doug Kish, now their regional director at LFN, they decided to make the move.

“I worked with Doug in the past and he was the best support I ever had in practice,” LoPresti said in the email. “We welcomed the opportunity to work with Doug again, and when he told us that LFN was the place for our practice, that was enough for us to entertain the move.”

LoPresti said they were receiving 100% of what Kish promised in recruiting the advisors to LFN. Asked where he and DiPierro hoped to take the practice, LoPresti said that he and his partner were looking toward their legacy as both a short-term and long-term goal.

“We’ve been lucky enough to grow the practice to its current level through our own organic efforts, but our hope is to really grow it beyond just Scott and Dean to where it is something that lives on beyond our years in business,” he said in the email. “Recruitment of a larger team is definitely a target idea, but it has to be the right people who fit our culture and what we are trying to do. Our clients expect a certain standard of care from us, so anyone coming on board with us needs to understand that. But ideally, we would love to get to a point in five years where we can look back and know that the practice will live on without either of us at the helm.”

DiMonda said in an email that LFN’s dual mission is to recruit and develop new talent from a diverse cross-section of communities nationwide through recent program launches of the African American Financial American Network (AAFAN) and Women Inspiring, Supporting and Educating (WISE), while also helping the firm’s current network of advisors successfully transition their practice to a successor when the time comes.

“Our mission is taking care of our advisors so they can take care of clients,” he said in the email. “Together, we can make a greater impact on clients, the community, and the industry.”

Founded in 1905 as a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based insurance company, Lincoln Financial Group is the marketing name for Lincoln National Corporation (LNC), a Fortune 200 holding company that operates multiple investment and insurance management businesses through subsidiary companies. Lincoln Financial Securities Corp., and Lincoln Investment Advisors Corp., are retail broker-dealers and registered investment advisors of Lincoln Financial Group.