By David Wignall

LPL Financial announced today that it has recruited two advisors from Robert W. Baird & Co. The advisors say they managed $870 million in client assets while at Baird.

Charlie Narmi and Theresa Rynaski joined LPL through its employee advisor channel, Linsco, which LPL Financial formally launched five years ago. By hiring advisors as W-2 employees, the channel marked a departure from LPL's traditional model of working with advisors as 1099 contractors.

The duo are calling their new practice The Narmi Group Investment Management.

Narmi and Rynaski are both industry veterans who have worked together for two decades. Before joining Baird in 2012, they worked at Smith Barney, according to BrokerCheck, a public database maintained by industry self-regulator Finra. Both Narmi and Rynaski are based in Omaha, Neb.

Rynaski said she and Narmi joined LPL because of its size, scale, and integrated technology stack. "Partnering with LPL will allow us to have the backing of a large firm, but with the independence to serve our clients our way," she said.

A representative from Baird did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LPL is already an industry titan, with 29,000 financial advisors and $1.7 trillion in client assets. In March, LPL's new CEO, Rich Steinmeier, told Barron's Advisor that he wanted his firm to compete directly with heavyweights like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Charles Schwab. "Those are great firms," he said. "We intend to be better. We want to support advisors better than anyone else."

In March, LPL announced that it would buy Commonwealth Financial Network, a large broker-dealer with nearly 3,000 advisors and $285 billion in assets. The announcement prompted some of LPL's wealth management rivals to try to recruit Commonwealth Advisors. Last year, LPL bought Atria, another large wealth management firm with 2,400 advisors and $100 billion of brokerage and advisory assets.

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 10, 2025 16:36 ET (20:36 GMT)

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