Pros
independent for the most part, can run your business the way you want. But LPL "steers" their advisors to the type of business model they prefer you run by setting more or less favorable payouts. If you produce over 500K and its pure vanilla business, you might be able to supplement with enough third party (extra expense) practice adds-ons to operate efficiently. The tactical asset allocation CMT they have on staff in Boston is decent, I like his work for the most part. The fundamental research group produces a lot of material to use in marketing and client retention. But their asset allocation model performance UNDER-PERFORMS consistently. SO like most bd's they produce nice pretty presentations that look good but end up hurting their clients with under-performance.
Kontras
Nearly Everything is Pathetic at LPL After 10 years of personal experience,my humble opinion is...The nations #1 independent broker deal is a joke 1. technology A. Trading Platform is a joke, was outdated 10 years ago, now its maddening B. Branchnet - their intranet is a frail platform run ONLY on windows internet explorer. It crashes frequently and after 10 years of working with it, it is still difficult to navigate and operate in an efficient manner, its coded so poorly that it makes working on it as the sole back office platform extremely frustrating and time consuming. 2. Service/Support they consistently loose client docs, they change forms so often you very rarely send in the "correct revised" version of the form, which worked last month but won't work this month. And when you actually use the correct form, they consistently fail to receive and image it, so you repeat operations over and over. The newer Charlotte office is incompetent for the most part, I end up hanging up and calling back, after waiting on hold for 10 min each time, as a way to eventually, randomly, be dealt with by someone who knows what they are doing. LPL was excellent in 2002-2003 when I joined, but going public has destroyed this company's culture, driven out nearly all of the quality staff, and is now just another pathetic excuse for an investment broker dealer. After 10 years of personal experience with LPL, trust me, it is much ado about NOTHING these days. Caveat: My gross production is under 500K, if you are over 500K your experience might differ...