Giving you more choice, and saving you time, when it comes to running your business

"You continue to shape the way we build our offerings and support, and inspire us to do better each year."

If there’s one thing we can take away from 2020, it’s that change is always happening, all around us. In fact, we’ve seen several years’ —perhaps decades’ —worth of change in a matter of months. And at times, we were all reeling from that change. But we were resilient, and we adapted. Whether that meant repurposing the dining room into a home office, scheduling the day around home schooling, or getting creative on how to make virtual gatherings feel more like the real thing (at LPL we had a Zoom summer dis-DANCE-party!). 

As we all got used to this new way of working, learning, and socializing, at LPL we also had to rethink the ways we deliver the most value. We’re here to take care of you, our advisors, so you can take care of your clients. So all of the solutions and capabilities we bring to you are developed with that lens — whether we’re creating new ways to help you run your business, connect with clients, or engage with us at LPL.

While we focus on bringing you more value, we’re also always thinking about ways we can save you time. Because our time is special, and incredibly valuable. And this year, with greater responsibilities and fewer opportunities to interact with each other, the time we do have together has become even more precious.

This three-part series reflects back on the ways we’ve tried to give you more — more choices, more value as your partner, and more time on your side. And in case you thought we might slow down in 2021, we’ll also share a few sneak peeks of what’s in store for next year.

Daily tasks made easier

Running a business is a lot of work. We know that separate from the valuable time you spend meeting with your clients, there’s even more time spent preparing for ose meetings and doing all the daily operational tasks needed to keep your business running smoothly and successfully.

One of the most valuable improvements we made this year was streamlining the process for you to open new accounts. This cut the time to open a new account in half! Since its launch, this time savings has accounted for a total of almost 36,000 days’ worth of time savings for LPL advisors and staff. That is over 4 years’ worth of time!

In 2021, we will roll out a similar experience for moving money in your clients’ accounts, which will dramatically cut down the time and confusion of one of the most complex and frequent workflows that your office has to manage.

We also want to make it easier for you to prepare for those valuable client meetings. We estimate that for every hour-long meeting you have, you spend 45 minutes using an average of six different applications to prepare for it. So we’ve built a new product that will centralize everything you need in one place — from templates, to automatic reports — it’ll all be one place, ready to go. Stay tuned for more on that next year!

More choice, more control

We also want to make sure you maintain the freedom of choice in how you run your business. One big area of focus for us when it comes to choice and convenience is our advisory offering. We continue to evolve our premier centrally managed platform, Model Wealth Portfolios, with new additions this year and more to come in 2021. To recap a few, we added:

  • New strategies to consider for your clients’ portfolios
  • Greater flexibility to help you navigate different market conditions
  • More ways to make requests for your clients, such as cash or trading requests
  • Technology to automate manual tasks and save you time
  • More ways to manage your costs, with lower or consolidated fees
  • New options for smaller accounts

And this is just the start. All of the enhancements we made this year set the stage for new features already planned for next year. The best is yet to come.

Bringing it all together

With all the great tools and technologies out there, one of the challenges we’ve heard from you is figuring out when and how to implement some of these into your practices. We aimed to make that process of adopting a new technology or way of working easier by connecting the dots through our thrivalist resources.

We connected the tools and technologies with the objectives you might be focused on — whether keeping your business running smoothly, engaging with clients more effectively, or looking to grow. To ensure that we’re addressing your needs and making it as easy as possible for you to leverage all of our offerings, we’ll continue to build on this approach in 2021.

Everything we do is with you in mind. So thank you for your feedback and for sharing your stories with us this year. You continue to shape the way we build our offerings and support, and inspire us to do better each year.

Next in our series

We continue our reflection on all the positive aspects of 2020 next week, when we focus on your valuable client connections, and the ways we can make it easier for you to engage with your clients.

For more information on the latest updates in our advisory experience, LPL advisors can visit the MWP Updates and Enhancements page on the Resource Center. For more on Thrivalist—including success stories from other advisors—LPL advisors can visit the dedicated Resource Center page, or go to lpl.com and search “thrivalist.”