A Florida-based advisory team of siblings is joining LPL Financial’s independence model from Merrill Lynch, creating the new firm Grafton Wealth Advisors with $580 million in assets.
The financial advisors include Sarah, William and Dexter Grafton. The trio are taking the reins from their father, William “Bill” Grafton III, who started the business in 1972. Client relationship managers Tanya Carroll and Percy Canteenwalla will also join them at LPL.
“This move puts us in a better position to provide highly customized strategies and independent financial advice in our client’s best interests, outside of corporate pressure,” Dexter Grafton said.
The team’s client list includes a roster of high-net-worth multigenerational families and business owners, with the advisory team offering estate, philanthropy and life insurance planning, income tax strategy, trustee services and a platform offering various alternative investment options.
Sarah Grafton and William Grafton IV joined the industry in 2008, with Dexter Grafton following several years later in 2013, according to their respective BrokerCheck profiles. The advisors were registered with Merrill for that entire period.
However, the trio sought more control over their operations, leading them to seek a new affiliation. Instead of going entirely solo, the team opted to link up with LPL Strategic Wealth Services, which meant access to LPL’s wealth management platform, pricing, technology and operational support (including a business strategist, marketing partner, CFO and administrative assistant).
LPL founded Strategic Wealth Services in 2020 for firms with more than $200 million AUM coming from wirehouses or full-service firms to soften the landing in the independent space, offering those firms the kind of business support standard in the wirehouse space. That included transition advice, assistance onboarding clients and helping set up compliance programs.
The Graftons aren’t the first advisory team to depart Merrill for LPL this year. In February, a duo of Pennsylvania-based advisors left the wirehouse to join LPL’s Strategic Wealth Services. James P. Debuque and Timothy Baltz managed about $1 billion at Merrill, creating Continuity Private Wealth when they landed at LPL.
LPL has had a busy 2024 thus far, including acquiring Atria Wealth Solutions, which manages about $100 billion and works with approximately 2,400 advisors and 150 banks and credit unions. As a part of the deal, Atria would move the brokerage and advisory assets custodied under several b/ds onto LPL’s platform.
LPL also added several teams from Osaic, in the wake of that network’s planned consolidation of its affiliated b/ds. Cubby Bice, a North Carolina-based advisor with $130 million, said he left Osaic because of the “untenable” situation caused by the mergers, accusing the firm of prioritizing scale while neglecting back office support (Osaic denied the allegation).
The firm also struck a deal with Wintrust Financial Corp. to transition its $13 billion wealth management business and $3 billion of its private client business to LPL, representing $16 billion in total (the businesses were previously affiliated with Wells Fargo).
But the IBD also changed its C-suite, with Kabir Sethi, managing director and chief product officer, leaving the firm by the end of March, with an “organizational realignment of certain business functions” listed as the cause (the firm had no plans to fill the role, with a spokesperson saying the position’s responsibilities were “realigned across different teams”). Before his two-year stint at LPL, Sethi was head of digital for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
