LPL Financial plans to launch a new mobile app in 2018 so advisors' clients can access their account information anywhere, anytime.
President and CEO Dan Arnold made the announcement before a crowd of 4,000 advisors and other guests at the opening general session of the independent broker-dealer's yearly conference, LPL Focus, taking place this week in Boston.
"For the past 10 years, we've heard about all this change going on in the industry," Arnold told the crowd. "I think we've heard about technology driving up prices. How about how regulatory changes will drive up cost? Or even how the millennials don't want our advice, and maybe worst of all, over the next few years, [how] we're all going to be replaced by robots."
Arnold, though, says this disruption represents "tremendous opportunity." To help advisors adapt and thrive in this climate, LPL has developed and implemented several new strategies and practices, which he outlined in his talk.
Afterwards, Arnold spoke with the media about LPL's two newest ideas for innovation — the new mobile app and the "Uberization" of the wealth-advice business. The CEO explained that the "Uberization" of LPL basically means capitalizing on the "shared economy" concept that Uber helped develop.
"When we think about trying to help advisors run a business, how do you think about tapping into that shared economy concept in order to help them lower the costs associated with their overhead?" Arnold asked. One way to do this is through a "virtual assistant," he says.
Instead of having a physical human assistant, advisors could tap into LPL, which would manage a group of virtual assistants for its affiliated advisors. "Now, I [would] pay for when I use it, I don't have to train them, [and] I don't have to manage them," he explained.
Best of all, Arnold said, "They're going to know the systems, so it takes friction out of the system, which potentially lowers my cost [as an advisor] and allows me to allocate my time to the highest yield."
