Financial Telesis provides broker-dealer services to its registered representatives and their clients, as well as registered investment advisory services. According to reports, the firm has about 400 financial advisors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Chetney, who recently resigned from LPL, will serve as chief executive of the new firm and will partner with LPL Financial’s hybrid RIA platform.

FTI's founder and CEO, Jim Williams, will join Global Retirement Partners as president to help manage the day-to-day operations of the RIA and serve as manager of the newly-formed LPL enterprise.

“Adding Global Retirement Partners as a new large LPL enterprise is another important step forward for LPL Financial in the retirement plan industry,” said Robert Moore, president at LPL.

“This new business venture is structured to ensure that numerous plan sponsors and their clients will benefit from his strategic thinking on retirement plan services, including in-plan advice, while simultaneously enabling Bill to return to his entrepreneurial roots and build a new business,” Moore added.

David Reich has been named executive vice president and head of LPL Retirement Partners and the firm's independent advisor services strategy, reporting to Bill Morrissey, managing director of independent advisor services.

Prior to joining LPL Retirement Partners in 2011, Reich served as vice president of retirement strategies and solutions at Ameriprise Financial. Before entering the retirement industry, he was vice president of strategic planning and business development at The American Express Company.

LPL’s growth in the retirement space

The move by LPL and Financial Telesis comes at a time when some 10,000 Baby Boomers are turning 65 years old every day, while people are also living longer. Meanwhile, as the Baby Boomer generation retires, advisors will need help managing the transition of billions of dollars from retirement plans into rollover IRAs, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, said in a white paper late last year.

In 2010, LPL Financial acquired certain assets of National Retirement Partners, which was founded and led by Chetney. LPL said the move provided it with a new opportunity to assist advisors in the US who focus on retirement consulting. 

Since 2010, LPL has grown its retirement partners group to support over 5,500 of its advisors with $99 billion in retirement plan assets custodied with third-party providers. These advisors provide retirement plan consulting strategies for some 39,000 plans with three million participants.

The new business venture with Financial Telesis is expected to close within the third quarter of 2014.

In other recent developments at LPL, last month the firm said is to establish new regional headquarters in Fort Mill, SC, and plans to add some 3,000 new jobs in the state in the coming years. Meanwhile, earlier in June, it created roles for two senior executives - Mimi Bock and Ryan Parker - as part of a “strategic shift” that has resulted in the elimination of the chief marketing position.

Most of the firm's existing marketing functions and all of its training teams will transition to the new client experience and training group, it said in a statement. Joan Khoury, currently chief marketing officer, will be leaving the company at the end of August.