2019 in Review

In last year’s review, I wrote that 2018 was a watershed year for IFP. I think that’s because we had no idea what was in store for 2019. Spoiler alert…launching a broker-dealer isn’t for the faint of heart. If you haven’t been following IFP’s journey, all you need to know is that in 2018 we announced we’d be leaving the safe confines of our previous broker-dealer, LPL Financial, and launching our own firm in 2019. And, well, we did it. There were ups and downs, successes and failures, celebrations and disappointments. In 2019, everyone here at IFP experienced enough extreme emotions for a lifetime. That said, I can tell you without hesitation that starting our own broker-dealer was 100% worth it, and we couldn’t be more excited for the future. But before we go headfirst into that future, I thought I’d leave behind a summary of the roller coaster that was 2019.

January 2019

As January was coming to a close, we’d yet to receive our official notice from FINRA that our application to become a broker-dealer had been approved. I’ll never forget the moment, as I was sitting in a barber shop in Atlanta on Thursday, January 31st ahead of Super Bowl weekend, I received a text from my boss (my mom) asking if I had seen the good news. When I opened my email, I saw that we had officially received approval from FINRA of our very own broker-dealer after more than 180 days of going back and forth. It was bittersweet because I wasn’t in Tampa to celebrate the announcement with everyone, but it was still one of the greatest moments I can remember for us as a company.

March 2019

By the time March arrived, the excitement from FINRA’s approval had waned, and the reality of the transition ahead weighed heavily on everyone. What made matters more stressful was our inability to successfully implement a technology that was going to help make the paperwork process for our transitioning advisors and clients a little easier. We underestimated the time and effort it was going to take to get the technology fully up and running, and, to be honest, we disappointed a lot of people. Our clearing and custodian partner, Pershing, luckily came to the table with a solution that was very helpful, but our inability to deliver on the promise of a more seamless paperwork process was still a failure.

May 2019

On May 22nd, we officially terminated from LPL Financial, and IFP Securities went live on May 23rd. We were then faced with the task of moving almost 200 advisors, their staff, and thousands of client accounts to the new firm, most of which is done, but some of which is still ongoing. Because of how our regulatory environment works, since we were moving from one broker-dealer to another, and because we didn’t fit the requirements of existing exceptions, we essentially had to move each advisor one by one, and each of them had to move their accounts one by one. I commend and thank our team here internally and also the advisors and their staff for all the work they went through to move their businesses to our new firm. It really shows that everyone believes in what we’re trying to do within our industry.

July 2019

July was one of the better months of 2019 because we were able to add a missing piece to our executive leadership team. For the better part of 2018 and 2019, we had been searching for a Chief Compliance Officer to lead our firm into the future. We had interviewed over 25 people, worked with multiple recruiting firms, and we still couldn’t find the right person. Then, suddenly, I received a LinkedIn message from Melissa Loner, who for some reason wanted to leave the upper compliance ranks of Cambridge, one of the largest broker-dealers in the country, move across the country to Tampa, and be a part of what we’re doing. Her hiring in July was a crucial moment for us, and it provided an infusion of expertise and knowledge that our firm needed.

October 2019

October was a stressful time for an important department. We had to replace two members of our 3-person Advisor Compensation Team at a time when advisors were already starting to get frustrated by the fact that their compensation was not yet fully back to normal, due to the transition. Luckily, we were able to add Lisa Robinson to our team as Director of Operations, and she has done a great job re-organizing the department and setting it on the right path.

November 2019

From the moment we decided to launch our own broker-dealer, we promised the advisors moving with us from LPL, our founding members, that they would be given equity shares in the new entity. In November, we were able to deliver on that promise and distribute the official stock grant agreements to everyone. We also gave each advisor a founding member pin, which they’ll be able to flaunt around our national conferences for years to come.

Looking Back

Looking back on 2019, I’m proud, humbled, appreciative, and bewildered by everything our staff and advisors were able to accomplish. It has truly been a battle launching this broker-dealer, transitioning everyone, and continuing to operate an already robust enterprise while also still building it. Nothing about this journey has been perfect. In fact, far from it. There were things we could have planned for better, and things we had no way of planning for at all. Regardless, I wouldn’t trade the experience our company went through in 2019 for anything. I can’t imagine a time when we’ll go through anything more difficult than the launch of our broker-dealer, and I feel like every single person here at IFP is a stronger, more knowledgeable, more resilient version of themselves than when we started down this road.

One of the positives of 2019 I haven’t yet mentioned was the fact that in addition to the almost 200 advisors we transitioned from LPL to our new firm, we've added over 40 new advisors to the firm since May. There has been more buy in and interest in our firm from new advisors sooner than we could have ever predicted, and I think it’s because the vision we have of a broker-dealer/RIA of the future, one built by advisors, for advisors, is one that truly resonates.

Looking Ahead

Given the above, one might expect me to talk about growth and recruiting when looking ahead. But that’s not our only focus. Don’t get me wrong – we have a healthy pipeline of advisors looking to onboard in 2020 and beyond, and that’s very exciting. But If we’ve learned anything as a firm in 2019, it’s that you can have the most appealing vision in the world, or the sexiest technology in the industry, but none of that matters if you can’t get the fundamentals right. If you can’t implement technologies properly and on time, if you don’t adhere to documented SLAs, if the basic operational components of your company don’t function properly every day, then the sexy stuff doesn’t matter.

As a firm, we are currently auditing all of our operational processes and making enhancements and automations wherever needed. For me, as Chief Operating Officer, our goal as a firm in 2020 is get as close to operational perfection as possible. The process of launching our broker-dealer and everything involved with that huge task is mostly over, which now gives us more capacity to focus on ensuring that the core processes we perform and the core services we provide to our advisors are up to our standards.

I’m excited to see what IFP can become now that we are in full control of our destiny. For years we imagined what it would be like to have our own broker-dealer and build a firm the way we would want...from the ground up. Given that dream is now a reality, the next dream is to build this firm to be the best independent broker-dealer and RIA in our industry. If in 2020 and beyond we pursue operational perfection, I have no doubts that next dream will become a reality at some point as well.

Happy New Year.

-CH