LPL’s Arnold eyes ‘opportunity’ created by Schwab integration of TD

investmentnews.com:

This week, Charles Schwab Corp. CEO Walt Bettinger called the process of moving registered investment advisors working with TD Ameritrade onto Schwab’s custody platform “imperfect.” A day later, Dan Arnold, CEO of LPL Financial Holdings Inc., a broker-dealer that is increasingly focused on RIA custody, said “opportunity” often results from such combinations.

Asked by analysts Thursday about the Schwab and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. integration, which occurred over Labor Day weekend, Arnold did not specifically say that LPL was focused on recruiting those RIAs to LPL’s custody business. Instead, he spoke in generalities about the integration, which involved 3.6 million accounts held across 7,000 registered investment advisors moving from TD to Schwab Advisor Services.

“When there’s transitions that occur in the marketplace, there’s generally opportunity that may occur around the transition of assets from one custodian to another or one broker-dealer from another,” Arnold said in a conference call discussing the firm’s third-quarter financial results, which saw LPL report organic, or in-house, net new advisory assets of $23 billion for the third quarter, representing 14% annualized growth.

“And depending on the complexity that may occur, then there’s some opportunity that may arise post that, whether that be because of new environment, service challenges, new technology, whatever the case may be,” Arnold said. “That may create some unrest. And that may create some opportunity.”

Charles Schwab announced in November 2019 that it was buying TD Ameritrade for $26 billion.

It wasn’t clear how many of the RIA assets, if any, that LPL reported as organic net new assets or recruited assets came from financial advisors