LPL's $1.6B Cambridge grab sets the breakaway benchmark

LPL Financial pulled a $1.6 billion team out of Cambridge Investment Research, the latest sign that its recruiting push is producing scale after a year spent on Commonwealth retention. AdvisorHub reported Monday that Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based Conte Wealth Advisors, led by Anthony M. Conte and including his father Frank A. Conte and brother-in-law Joseph C. Henriques, joined LPL on Aug. 18.

The practice is a multi-generational operation, founded by Conte's grandfather after entering the business in the 1950s and taken over by Anthony in 2012; Anthony himself started at Prudential in 2004, according to BrokerCheck. The team has already lived the platform-hopping life: Prudential Securities, Mutual Service Corporation in 2005, its own RIA between 2006 and 2009, then Cambridge. The firm's 24 advisors and $1.6 billion book work out to roughly $67 million per advisor, with offices in Camp Hill, York, Hershey and Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and Fort Myers, Florida.

Conte says it plans to expand by recruiting growth-oriented advisors and calls LPL's size, technology and resources "essential" to that goal; Anthony Conte described the transition support as "remarkable." The announcement's public rationale centers on platform scale — exactly the language any advisor weighing a switch should hold its platform to.

LPL, the largest independent broker-dealer with roughly 32,500 advisors, needs such a win after spending much of last year retaining advisors tied to its August 2025 purchase of Commonwealth Financial Network; its senior recruiter stepped down in April. Since then it has landed teams from D.A. Davidson, MassMutual and U.S. Bank, and bought Mariner Advisor Network, adding 367 advisors and $31 billion. Conte stands out among the 16 other hires LPL has announced this year — all at $500 million or below, or without reported AUM — and the loss lands on a Cambridge operation with roughly $283 billion under advisement and 4,100 brokers, even as LPL has lost teams to Summit Financial, Cetera and Raymond James. So the win does not yet amount to a recovery.

The Conte path is the lesson for advisors benchmarking their next platform: a 24-person, multi-generational practice chose scale, technology and support over another run at independence. Cetera's fifth channel now puts every independence option under one roof, and Cetera is among the firms pulling teams away from LPL. The next advisor in a recruiting conversation can use Conte's own words as a checklist: size, technology, resources, and a transition worth calling remarkable.