$535M team back to LPL after Wells Fargo stint; IRS finalizes 10-year rule for inherited IRAs; Commonwealth fights $93M fine

INDUSTRY NEWS: After eight years at Wells Fargo's independent channel, a 12-person advisory team managing more than $500 million is returning to LPL Financial .

Harbor Lights Financial Group, Inc. , a Manasquan, New Jersey-based firm managing $535 million in advisory, brokerage and retirement assets, left LPL in 2016 to join Wells Fargo Advisors' independent channel, known as FiNet. Doug Lockwood, CFP? , a managing partner and founder of Harbor Lights, said the team is returning in large part because of the help LPL can offer in selling the practice when he and his colleagues want to retire.

"Their acquisition program was critical," Lockwood said. "When we're ready to retire, we can just push a button and get out of the business and sell it to our junior partners. That will ensure we get compensated and our clients and staff get taken care of in the long run."

Read: $535M team returns to LPL after trying Well Fargo's indie channel

TAX PLANNING: The IRS has quashed any remaining hope that it would alter its new guidelines for inherited individual retirement accounts, ending the "stretch" strategy for most beneficiaries.

With its finding in rules issued last month that tax revenue-raising provisions of the 2019 Secure Act require so-called noneligible beneficiaries who have inherited IRAs in 2020 or later to transfer all the assets into their income within a decade, the IRS told financial advisors and their clients that there would be no more delays in implementation or a shift in the final statutes. That means beneficiaries must begin taking required minimum distributions next year — if they haven't already started. But experts agree that it's likely past time to initiate that process.

Read: Final IRS rules to IRA beneficiaries: Get going on those RMDs already

REGULATION AND COMPLIANCE: Commonwealth Financial Network is fighting what it calls a "draconian" landmark judgment, arguing the SEC never established a causal link between client harm and its allegedly inadequate investment disclosures.

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Commonwealth, an independent RIA and broker-dealer firm with 2,300 independent advisor representatives, filed a brief last month in its appeal seeking the overturn of the more than $93 million judgment the firm was hit with in late March over allegations that it had failed to adequately disclose how it makes money from its recommendations of certain mutual fund products. The amount — consisting of $72 million in disgorgement and civil penalties, as well $21.2 million in prejudgment interest — was handed down by Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court in Boston in a legal action brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2019.

Read: Commonwealth appeals $93M fine, says there's no evidence of client harm

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