LPL Worksite Platform Gains With New York Life Endorsement

By Cyril Tuohy InsuranceNewsNet

By Cyril Tuohy

LPL Financial Retirement Partners has scored a “significant win” for advisors by offering the Worksite Financial Solutions (WFS) retirement platform to 401(k) plan customers of New York Life Retirement Plan Services, an LPL executive said.

New York Life is among the largest retirement plan companies in the United States. WFS, hosted by LPL Financial Retirement Partners, helps employees with corporate retirement plans to receive face-to-face, customized financial advice and education when they are employed and also once they’ve retired.

Personalized retirement investment advice is often considered out of reach for many workers because it is expensive.

“This will enable us to offer the Worksite Financial Solutions platform to my New York Life plan sponsors, including a number of our existing $100 million-plus plans,” retirement plan advisor Barbara Delaney, principal of StoneStreet Equity in Pearl River, N.Y., said in a statement.

Interest levels were “higher than anticipated,” she added.

Surveys of employees reveal that many Americans feel unprepared for retirement, but at the same time, they value the advice and guidance of financial advisors. In addition, investors who receive advice do better over the long term than retirees who don’t.

Bill Chetney, executive vice president of LPL Financial Retirement Partners, said that adding employers with retirement plans offered by New York Life was the latest affirmation of LPL’s model for helping employees with their retirement.

“The addition of New York Life to the growing roster of retirement plan recordkeepers who can administratively support our Worksite Financial Solutions platform is a significant win for LPL Financial, our advisors and retirement plan participants,” he said in a statement.

Many employees long for affordable, conflict-free advice, the kind that is imparted by fee-only advisors with a fiduciary responsibility to clients. Fee-only advisors, however, rarely even bother with account balances below a certain threshold.

With Worksite Financial Solutions, participants with as little as $2,000 in assets have access to a financial advisor because all the assets in the company’s retirement plan are aggregated. From the perspective of the advisor, the participant belongs to a multimillion-dollar retirement plan.

With 13,400 financial advisors, LPL is the fourth-largest broker-dealer in the U.S. behind Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Wells Fargo Advisors and Bank of America’s Global Wealth & Investment Management unit.

Cyril Tuohy is a writer based in Pennsylvania. He has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. He can be reached at <em>[email protected].

Cyril Tuohy is a writer based in Pennsylvania. He has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. He can be reached at [email protected].