Why Choose an Independent Financial Advisor?

Working with an independent financial advisor affiliated with LPL Financial can provide an attractive combination of personal advice, choice, and institutional resources. Unlike a traditional employee-based advisor model, an independent advisor has greater freedom to determine how to serve clients and build a practice around their needs. LPL independent model allows advisors to own their client relationships and operate under their own personal brand. This independence can translate into a more personalized client experience, where the advisor—not a corporate sales model—is at the center of the relationship.

One of the most significant advantages is investment and product flexibility. Baird Wealth Management, LLC and LPL Financial do not offer proprietary products and provide clients with access to open-architecture investment solutions and independent research. That means we can evaluate a broad range of investments and strategies rather than being limited to any firm's proprietary lineup. For clients, this creates greater opportunity to build recommendations around their individual objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon, and financial circumstances.

An independent advisor can also combine personal attention with the resources of a large financial-services organization. LPL provides technology, research, compliance and risk-management resources, operational support, and other tools designed to allow advisors to spend more time working directly with clients. 

The combination becomes especially compelling when the independent advisor is also a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) professional. CFP® certification represents a separate professional qualification involving education, examination, experience, and ethics requirements. A CFP® professional is trained to look at the client's financial picture more broadly—including investments, retirement, insurance, taxes, and estate planning—rather than viewing an investment account in isolation. For a client, having an independent advisor with CFP® credentials can therefore provide both breadth of financial-planning expertise and greater freedom in how recommendations are implemented.