A Miami-based advisory firm that manages $1 billion of mostly 401(k) assets has added LPL Financial as its third RIA custodian and primary broker-dealer — and is getting perhaps hundreds of millions of assets sent its way in the bargain.

Ingham Retirement Group made the big Boston and San Diego-based broker-dealer part of its custody triad along with Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services and Schwab Advisor Services.

The move came in conjunction with the firm dropping Reading, Mass.-based Sentinel Securities Inc. as its broker-dealer to make LPL its provider of transaction-related services. Sentinel, an affiliate of Sentinel Benefits & Financial Group, also of Reading, did not respond to a request for comment.

Fiduciary care

The choice of a broker is somewhat ancillary to the custody decision but still plays a critical role in making the machinery of a 401(k) business work, according to Jennifer Ingham, vice president of sales and product development at Ingham Retirement Group.

Brooke’s Note: In watching the PBS Frontline documentary, largely about the 401(k) business, you can’t help but feel a sense of helplessness creeping over you. What you despair of is that many hands wash each other in the 401(k) business, the brokerage business, the mutual fund business and even in Washington where those businesses can lobby effectively. What Brendan Little explains in this column — and not without a decent dollop of self-interest that the lawyer acknowledges with good humor — is that it’s not as if consumers or plan sponsors are without legal remedies to call upon. Nor are they completely without the power to divine when their rights are being trampled. This article is a good primer for people who might want to know how to take advantage of the law. It’s also a good heads up for advisors who’s just as soon not get sued.

A recent “Frontline” documentary by PBS highlights the harm done by excessive 401(k) plan fees, but largely ignores the underused legal remedies that are already available to 401(k) participants and plan sponsors under the Employee ...

Brooke’s Note: I was maybe the last of my generation to get a driver’s license. I knew that any moron could do it. After all every one of them that I knew was hot-rodding around town. But still there were a world of things to learn and I didn’t want to stop and figure them all out. I think Twitter is a bit like that. Anybody can do it — easily. But many people don’t know where to begin — or they are like the Massachusetts drivers of the information highway and should have their tweeting privileges revoked. In an act of empathy and — there-are-no-stupid-questions pedagogy — Aaron Klein has written a column that I think is a key primer for any Twitter or would-be Twitter user before they warble out their next tweet.

It seems like every industry conference I’m invited to, someone is exhorting advisors to get active on social media. That’s largely because advisors need to rapidly build an authentic relationship of trust, and demonstrate their expertise and influence, if they’re going to win new clients.

Twitter is one of the best ways ...

LPL Financial is shifting its focus toward building 13,000 mini-empires — and dialing back on adding critical mass for its own sake.

The largest of the independent broker-dealers, based in Boston and San Diego, began its self-identified third stage of maturity this year after completing a five-year stretch of its second stage.

During that 2008 to 2012 period the company largely focused on branching out into the RIA and defined-contribution plan business, according to its chief financial officer, Dan Arnold. He made the case during the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Smid Cap Conference held on May 7 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. See: LPL shows flashes of its new image at Financial Masters 2013.

“[It was] more about expanding our capabilities to attract a more diverse set of advisors,” he says.

Brooke’s Note: It seems like every time that we write about some grand integration, I get e-mails from people who say they looked under the hood and, lo-and-behold, it’s not really all that integrated. See: Fidelity is bidding its HybridOne brand farewell. I understand from Gabe Garcia and Mark Tibergien at Pershing that the combining of the BNY and Pershing custody units is not fully complete and that interested parties should stay tuned. Nonetheless, what has been developed in the past 18 months is already a major advancement and one that puts it ahead of competitors for aggregation of service and viewing of accounts from both the banking and brokerage side of the business. And it doesn’t hurt that the bank in question is BNY Mellon. Still, I’ll keep checking my e-mail inbox.

For as long as Mark Tibergien has been in his job, he has been hearing it: If only you could find a way to bring the worlds of BNY Mellon and Pershing together as one offering for RIAs.

“It’s been a dream of ours,” says the chief executive of Pershing Advisor Solutions ...

Brooke’s Note: In a relatively commoditized industry like RIA asset custody, it could easily be argued that the world doesn’t need another one. I disagree. So when Royal Bank of Canada through its RBC wealth subsidiaries came charging into the RIA business a few years ago, I saw it as a potentially very positive development. I imagined that there was a Canadian, Minnesotan, big league, intimate unit vibe at the company — not to mention its broad experience, substance and services — that could speak to the deeps, as they say, of a certain brand of advisor. See: RBC’s appearance on custody scene could be a 'game changer’. And when I interviewed some of the advisors who were moving assets there, my suspicions were confirmed. So it is in that spirit that we write this article. What I have heard from a few sources on or off the record is that RBC has taken its foot off the RIA accelerator. If that’s true, as this article suggests, it’s not a sin. It just seems too bad. RBC is new enough that its still in the peripheral vision ...

It shot across the RIA sky like a comet during the latter half of 2012.

But it wasn’t meant to burn brightly and then fall to earth.

The idea of Advizent was to take all the biggest, best RIAs, create a beyond-the-requirements fiduciary and service standard and put it all under one brand — and then market and advertise the bejesus out of it. The icing on the cake was that two of the hotter talents in the business — Steve Lockshin (Fortigent, Convergent founder) and Charles Goldman (ex-head of Schwab and Fidelity RIA units) — were putting themselves and their capital into the effort. See: Steve Lockshin and Charles Goldman begin to unveil Advizent, a venture that could put thousands of RIAs under a single cooperative.

Like any venture that fails to reach going-concern status, there are no neat-package answers for what exactly didn’t click. Still, we can’t help but ask. In this interview, Steve Garmhausen, one of advisory journalism’s best interviewers, asks tough questions of Steve Lockshin — an effusive interviewee — about what happened and where it leaves Lockshin’s life, career and sense of mission in this ...

Brooke’s Note: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean…you know the rest. I think there’s an ironical phrasing that can be used, too, for the people who are more shocked, shocked by the “shock” value of PBS Frontline than by anything that it revealed. How about: Just because a journalist achieves shock value doesn’t mean that the subject matter isn’t pretty darn shocking. Yes, those of us who really know the business know it could have been much, much better — and there was at least one overreach. The documentary was being done by a person, Martin Smith, who is — by his own frank admission — keeping a small production company going past retirement age because he doesn’t have enough to retire on. In other words, one behind-the-eight-ball baby boomer artsy type takes on the mutual fund and 401(k) business. You can see the glass as half empty on that; I see it half full. Smith had the courage to show that aspect of ourselves that we hide more than our sexual quirks — money issues. Sure, he could have balanced the PBS piece by ...

Brooke’s Note: You hear it over and over again. Hitting landmines is not the issue for entrepreneurs. Most do. The issue is how they handle the fallout. Here is a vivid, teeming and real-time example of such a rebound. One detail I like here is the serious Bastille-storming by Concepcion himself in developing centers of influence on behalf of his troops. It just shows that there is business there for the taking by those who are determined enough.

Four years ago, Jeffrey Concepcion was in the battle of his professional life.

Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. had kicked him out after 23 years, and he was fighting a nasty case under FINRA, the self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers. At the same time, he was starting an advisory firm under LPL Financial, hoping to recruit new advisors, but growth was slow. See: LPL vacuums up yet another $1-billion cluster of mostly RIA assets Alabama-style.

“The challenge was to ramp up the new business and close out the old issues with the prior firm, and launching this firm was tough,” Concepcion says. “The time and energy and resources was a challenge.”

Brooke’s Note: I think this column is important. We all know that consumers have a heck of a time discerning a good advisor from a bad one. They don’t know where to begin. So Grant Barger is giving consumers a starting place by creating to-the-marrow questions for them to ask as delivered by advisors who are more than happy to answer them.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions – Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist

Advisors have been reading articles directed toward investors describing “the right questions to ask your advisor” since the inception of The Wall Street Journal. Questions about fees and certifications as well as performance-based return-on-investment inquisitions are usually in the deluge of published ideas regarding what value the advisor actually brings to the table. These questions often fit perfectly into many sales scripts and pitches, which involve handling objections.

The advisor who wishes to remain relevant will be reading from a different script — one that places him or her in a position of expert client-centric wealth manager. If you ...