When LPL announced their purchase of four National Planning Holdings (NPH) firms, it wasn’t just another day at the office for advisors in the independent broker/dealer space. “I feel like I’m riding a wave of disruptive uncertainty,” one IBD advisor said to me. “Are we next?”
The feeling of “disruptive uncertainty” is quite understandable. The notion that everything you built your life’s work upon may change at any time can be quite unsettling. No one checks in with you first to see if you want things to change; it just happens. And when it happens, you feel like you’ve lost all power and control over your business life.