Aggregators are buying the teams now

LPL Financial added five advisors in two separate lifts on September 10, and the origins of those advisors show where the liftout market has moved: Dan Hocking arrived from RBC Wealth Management and Ryan Lewis from Morgan Stanley to join Linsco by LPL under the ClearHaven Wealth Management banner, a three-advisor group assembled from two wirehouses, while Pat Gilbert led a two-advisor team from Harbour Investments into LPL as Preferred Financial Group. One platform, two practice names, five advisors, three prior firms—and those prior firms split between wirehouse and independent channels.

That split is the change. The classic wirehouse liftout moves a team from one big brokerage to another, with a forgivable note and a clean asset transfer; LPL's ClearHaven transaction assembled a team from two different firms, so the advisors were forming a group under LPL's roof rather than relocating one. The Harbour team, by contrast, came from an independent broker-dealer, a channel that historically fed the independent space rather than a platform aggregator. LPL pulled from both sides in a single day, which suggests the aggregator channel has become a destination for production teams regardless of where they currently sit.

Modern Wealth Management announced the same day that it acquired Sanchez Wealth Management Group, a $710 million AUM firm, and Baird advisor Jesse Wilson moved to Edelman Financial Engines with $220 million in AUM. Between those two disclosed books, $930 million in client assets changed hands through aggregator-driven moves on September 10, a figure that still leaves out the five LPL advisors because their books were not specified. The pattern holds beyond LPL: national RIAs and institutional broker-dealers are buying production teams outright, rather than recruiting individual advisors one at a time.

A wirehouse recruiter prices a team off trailing production and pays it through a transition package, while an aggregator acquisition such as Modern Wealth's Sanchez deal brings the assets onto a platform and bets that fee revenue, planning, and back-office support will retain the clients once the local brand is replaced. A $710 million AUM firm is large enough to matter to a roll-up, but still small enough that platform economics, rather than asset value, will determine whether the deal works; assets are not revenue, and revenue after platform fees, payouts, and retention is the only thing that returns the purchase price.

Edelman's pickup of Wilson is the smaller end of the same logic: a $220 million book from Baird moves onto a national RIA platform, where the buyer can offer financial planning and tax services alongside the existing advisory relationship. The platform is buying a revenue stream with an advisor attached, betting that the combined offering lets it retain and grow a book that a solo move might not sustain.

LPL's ClearHaven case is the cleanest test of that shift. The three advisors came from two wirehouses, which means the team was created by the platform rather than exported from one, and if that holds, LPL is acquiring existing production while manufacturing new production units out of advisors who came from different prior firms. That is a different business, and it changes what the rest of the industry is bidding against: a wirehouse can counter a liftout with retention packages, but it cannot easily counter an aggregator that builds teams from its own inventory.

The Harbour liftout led by Pat Gilbert is the more traditional shape—a two-advisor group moving from one independent broker-dealer to LPL—but both moves feed the same conclusion: the liftout is no longer primarily a wirehouse raid. The aggregator channel has become a second bid with scale, platform economics, and the ability to offer the team a local brand inside a national operation, while firms that still recruit one advisor at a time are solving next quarter's production gap with a tool increasingly overmatched by whole-team acquisitions.

The September 10 disclosures give AUM but not purchase prices or transition amounts, so the return math is invisible. The direction is plain: the same day LPL pulled two teams from different channels, Modern Wealth announced a $710 million acquisition, and Edelman added a Baird advisor. Aggregators are no longer the marginal buyer in the advisor movement market; they are setting the pace, and that pace implies the wirehouse raids, still large, now compete with a second bid that can offer scale, platform support, and a path to independence that is harder to replicate with a recruiting check.

The $930 million in disclosed AUM that moved to Modern Wealth and Edelman on September 10 is less important than the five advisors LPL added without an AUM figure, because the aggregator channel is now bidding on people as much as assets. The next time an RBC team is in play, the competing bid will include Morgan Stanley or UBS and also an LPL Linsco office, a Modern Wealth, or an Edelman.