NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SmartAsset, the largest marketplace connecting consumers to financial advisors, today announced that LPL Financial LLC (“LPL”), a leading partner to financial advisors, has selected SmartAsset for inclusion in LPL’s Vendor Affinity Program. Starting in June 2021, more than 18,000 independent financial advisors who are affiliated with LPL Financial may now leverage SmartAsset’s industry disrupting SmartAdvisor platform, which connects validated consumer prospects with fiduciary financial advisors across the U.S.
LPL’s Vendor Affinity Program is designed to help advisors reduce the complexity and costs of running their businesses, curating a network of third-party vendors that have agreed to provide their products and services to LPL advisors at discounted prices. Vendors are selected for inclusion in the program based on advisor demand, the ease of using their products or services, and their ability to meet LPL’s security and compliance requirements.
“We’re thrilled to be added to LPL’s Vendor Affinity Program. We’re seeing a major shift in the way that advisors grow their business, as more individual RIAs and firms turn to digital marketing channels to boost investor prospecting and, in turn, AUM growth,” says Michael Carvin, Founder and CEO, SmartAsset. “Because we reach more than 100 million consumers each month, our audience size and unparalleled scale allows us to generate billions of dollars in new AUM for our partners every year. We’re looking forward to driving growth for LPL advisors for years to come.”
LPL Financial-affiliated advisors will also have the opportunity to utilize SmartAsset’s ‘Live Connections’ service. Exclusively available to advisors on SmartAsset’s SmartAdvisor platform, Live Connections is a new way of delivering high-intent, validated consumer prospects via a warm phone transfer to RIAs and firms to meet today’s on-demand expectations. Live Connections reduces advisors’ marketing burden by eliminating the time they spend prospecting, contacting, and following up with consumers. In solving a key pain point for advisors - growing their practice while maximizing the time they spend with clients - SmartAdvisor and Live Connections has positively disrupted the wealth planning industry for prospecting and AUM growth.
“As the need for digital marketing solutions increases, we recognize the value that a tool like SmartAsset can be to advisors looking to grow their practices,” says Rob Pettman, LPL Financial executive vice president, Wealth Management Solutions. “SmartAsset gives them a new way to connect with investors across the country digitally, while also freeing up time to spend with their existing clientele. It also provides advisors more choice in solutions they can leverage to grow their business.”
SmartAsset matches investors who are searching for financial advice with fiduciary financial advisors, who can select the geography and asset tier of prospects that they choose to work with. Propelled by the launch of Live Connections, SmartAdvisor has seen 100% growth in referred assets. In April, referred assets that flowed through SmartAdvisor were more than $35 billion. In addition, the amount of closed investable assets for advisors on SmartAdvisor increased from $5 billion in 2019 to $10 billion in 2020 and is tracking for $20 billion in 2021. SmartAsset’s goal is to refer $100 billion in new, closed AUM to advisors by 2024.
Reaching more than 100 million people each month, SmartAsset is the web’s go-to resource for financial advice. The average SmartAdvisor investor is about 57 years old, has investable assets of $890,000 and 76% reported that they do not currently have an advisor. Approximately 70% are retired or less than 10 years away from retirement. Given the vast size of SmartAsset’s audience, the SmartAdvisor platform and Live Connections service are meaningfully changing how financial advisors approach marketing, business development and lead generation in the digital age.
To learn more about SmartAsset’s SmartAdvisor platform and Live Connections service, please visit: https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/about.
About SmartAsset
SmartAsset is the web’s go-to resource for financial advice that powers SmartAdvisor, the largest marketplace connecting consumers to financial advisors and financial products. Reaching more than 100 million people each month through its educational content and personalized calculators and tools, SmartAsset’s mission is to help people make smart financial decisions. SmartAsset was named to Y Combinator’s list of Top 100 Companies of all time, Forbes’ list of America’s Best Startup Employers in 2020 and named 2021 Best Financial Planning Technology Company in New York by Wealth & Finance International. For more information, please visit SmartAsset.com.
