Celebrating 35 Years of Strategic Asset Management (SAM)

IN THIS ARTICLE

• SAM's Origins
• From Skepticism to Growth
• Five Advisory Platforms
• Recent Enhancements
• Ready for What's Next

How Advisors Sparked a Fee-Based Revolution

In the early 1990s, a group of LPL Financial advisors raised a question that challenged the industry's prevailing commission-based business model: Could investments be managed within a single account and billed through an ongoing asset-based fee rather than individual commissions?

They recognized the potential for a more sustainable, advice-centered approach to investing, and LPL responded by developing Strategic Asset Management (SAM), a platform designed to support that approach.

More than three decades later, SAM remains an important part of LPL's advisory offering and serves as an example of how advisor feedback has influenced the firm's platform development over time.

From Skepticism to $727 Billion

SAM launched in 1991 and quickly gained traction. Within a few years, the platform reached $5 billion in assets, surpassing its nearest competitor. Today, SAM manages approximately $727 billion in assets.*

"As I reflect back on the history of LPL, launching SAM was such a major turning point in changing the nature of the firm and how advisors work with their clients," said Tom Murphy, Executive Vice President, Head of Advisory. "It genuinely separated us from our competitors."

The pattern that emerged with SAM — advisors identify a need, LPL builds a solution — became the blueprint for every platform that followed.

Five Platforms for Every Practice

A few years after SAM's launch, advisors asked for a way to offer their clients LPL Research's investment perspective without having to build the models themselves. That request led to centrally managed platforms, starting with Model Wealth Portfolios (MWP).

"The MWP platform allows LPL advisors to access a full lineup of models from third-party strategists and build their own models while outsourcing the trading and rebalancing to LPL," said Murphy. "This not only gives advisors the ability to create personalized portfolios for their clients but also allows them to gain scale and efficiency with a models-based practice."

Today, LPL offers five advisory platforms that give you a wide range of advisory solutions:

• Model Wealth Portfolios (MWP): LPL's Unified Managed Account (UMA) platform empowers advisors to leverage hundreds of third-party strategist models, build their own models, or combine strategist models with their own.
• Optimum Market Portfolios (OMP): Turnkey platform that provides access to multimanager mutual fund portfolios featuring more than 10 industry-renowned sub-advisors.
• Guided Wealth Portfolios (GWP): Supports a digital investment experience for clients using exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolios designed by LPL Research.
• Manager Select / Manager Access Select / Manager Access Network: Enables access to hundreds of separately managed accounts (SMAs) so clients can own individual securities while advisors keep control of the portfolio.
• Strategic Asset Management (SAM) / Strategic Wealth Management (SWM): LPL's rep-as-portfolio-manager platforms that support completely customized portfolios while wrapping multiple investments in one account.

Recent Enhancements Save You Time

Just this year, LPL advisors gained access to several key enhancements, including:

• SAM/SWM expanded tax management options: Streamlines tax-loss harvesting through the ClientWorks Rebalancer trading tool with the ability to identify losses across accounts and enable wash-sale safeguards.
• SAM/SWM model-level equivalencies: Simplifies oversight, improves consistency, and creates scale by applying equivalents to SAM/SWM models in ClientWorks Rebalancer.
• MWP Portfolio Model templates: Creates scale and consistency across portfolios with the ability to create portfolio templates for each client type or investment objective and manage them together.
• MWP UMA Strategist Portfolios: Gives advisors the opportunity to outsource the complexity of UMA with turnkey portfolio solutions from well-known, industry-leading asset managers.

Built on Your Ideas, Ready for What's Next

LPL's goal is to create the industry's most diverse and compelling suite of wealth management solutions for advisors like you to choose from. With your ongoing feedback, we will continue to shape the future of financial advice as we build tomorrow's wealth management landscape, together.