Masters in Business · Oct 30, 2026 · 1h 8m · 58m saved
With Rich Steinmeier, CEO of LPL Financial
LPL Financial supports about 32,000 independent advisors with $2.6 trillion in client assets, and its CEO says those advisors spend only about 30% of their working time actually advising clients. Rich Steinmeier, CEO of LPL Financial, told Masters in Business that a $2 billion technology build is meant to invert that ratio within ten years.
Most of the industry treats technology as the thing that might replace the advisor. Rich has spent his career on the other side of that bet, and LPL ties its advisors down with no non-competes at all.
"The advisor leads, the firm follows... when the firm follows, that means that you need to make sure that the technology is lifting the advisor versus displacing."
Rich ran the call-center business at Merrill Lynch that became Merrill Edge, built the robo-advice strategy at UBS as its chief digital officer, and has led LPL since 2024 after joining in 2018 in business development.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 68 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Advisors spend about 30% of their time advising clients, and Rich expects AI to raise that to about 70% over ten years
LPL has no non-competes, and its advisor attrition runs about 1.5% against an industry rate near 5%
LPL's model portfolios moved from 60-40 to roughly 40-30-30, with 30% in alternatives or non-correlated assets
The robo-advisor scare of the early 2010s did not replace advisors, and Rich says it made the case for combining people and software
LPL integrates acquired firms' back offices but keeps their client-facing service, to avoid what Rich calls "Frankenfirms"
Future growth leans toward partnerships rather than M&A, because the scale needed to compete keeps rising
Many RIA aggregators now resemble the W-2 firms that independent advisors originally left
1. From McKinsey to Merrill
Rich studied economics at Wharton, took an MBA at Stanford and started as a McKinsey consultant in Cleveland, where he met his wife. He looked at buying auto dealerships before a headhunter called in 2006.
Rich joined Merrill Lynch in 2006 to bring the brand to mass-affluent clients
"I got a call from a headhunter about an opportunity to take the Merrill Lynch brand to the mass affluent market... I thought, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity." — Rich Steinmeier
He arrived as the financial crisis was building. Running Merrill's Financial Advisory Center through it, the call-center model that became Merrill Edge after Bank of America bought the firm, taught him how a leader should talk to staff under stress.
Rich learned in 2008 to name the risks and the plan for each one, even in bad times
"Even in times that are very difficult, be as transparent as possible... Here are the risks as we see them. Here's how we're mitigating risks." — Rich Steinmeier
