According to a recent article in the New York Times, LPL Financial, has 13,300 brokers, 6,500 offices, 4.3 million customers — and a growing list of problems with regulators. LPL is now the nation’s fourth-largest brokerage firm — after Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch — and the largest in much of rural America--its […]

Last week LPL Financial Holdings agreed to pay $2.5 million in fines and restitution for improperly supervising brokers who sold non-traded real estate investment trusts. (Please note that LPL neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.) These non-traded REITs are high-yielding and very popular. These non-traded REITs have jumped about 50% since 2009, to $65 billion. They […]

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 11, 2013, Matthew Heimer writes that ever since the Federal Reserve started pushing interest rates to new lows, it’s been a common theme for retirees and other conservative investors accepting more risk to get a decent income from their portfolios. Last week LPL Financial Holdings agreed […]

Financial regulators are confronting investor frauds that are giving retirement savers steep losses on complex products that until a few years ago were aimed only at the most sophisticated investors, writes Nathaniel Popper in a New York Times article from Feb. 11, 2013. These victims are among the millions of Americans whose mutual funds and […]

Massachusetts securities regulators sued LPL Financial, LLC, in December over sales practices of brokers regarding the REITs. Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Galvin, charged LPL Financial with a failure to supervise registered reps who sold the nontraded REITs in violation of both state limitations and the company's rules. The Securities Division also charged LPL Financial […]