LPL Financial said that it had closed on the acquisition of Commonwealth Financial Network Friday morning, adding that it was pushing out its final integration timing to the fourth quarter of 2026.

LPL announced in March its intention to acquire privately-held Commonwealth, the Waltham, Mass.-based independent broker/dealer which has 3,000 advisors and $305 billion in assets, for a purchase price of about $2.7 billion in cash.

On Friday, LPL announced that it had completed all the pre-close work on the deal, and that it was on track with a retention target of 90% of Commonwealth advisors.

On an earnings call Thursday evening, President and CFO Matt Audette said his firm expects to move Commonwealth assets onto the LPL platform in the fourth quarter of 2026, a little later than its original timeframe.

“We’ve had four months of fever-pitched engagement with them, where we have gotten to know the advisors, the leadership team, and more broadly the employees better and better,” CEO Rich Steinmeier said. “And as we’ve stated continually, we are committed to preserving that unique culture, the advisor experience the brand, and in fact, we’ll only enhance what they already receive with the combination of the LPL capabilities with that Commonwealth experience.”

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“We are quite pleased to hear this update,” Citizens Bank analyst Devin Ryan wrote in a note that reiterated the bank’s outperform rating. “Management noted it now currently anticipates the advisor onboarding/conversion of platforms to occur in 4Q26, relative to the prior timing of 2Q-3Q26—which it attributed to a more refined view around the scope of the technology and operational work required to ensure an exceptional experience. Ultimately, this makes little difference in the long term, and it is more important to get this deal as close to perfect as possible, in our view.”

Steinmeier said that despite noise in many of the trade publications about Commonwealth advisors looking to change firms rather than join the much larger LPL, he felt good about advisor retention.

“We’ve engaged with so many advisors, and for those Commonwealth advisors who are prioritizing the Commonwealth experience, their community, the technology service ongoing and really staying at their forever home for their business and their clients, staying with Commonwealth is their only option. But as with any transaction or competitive recruiting event, some advisors will prioritize differently. That exact dynamic is contemplated in our retention target.”

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Several high-profile teams have already jumped ship for rival broker/dealers.

One analyst asked Steinmeier about Commonwealth advisors who are choosing to start their own RIAs instead of joining LPL. Commonwealth advisor Adam Spiegelman, for example, who oversees some $400 million in assets, recently told Wealthmanagement.com he was accelerating his timeline to start his own RIA rather than go through the transition to LPL.

Steinmeier said that wasn’t surprising, given that Commonwealth advisors tend to skew heavily towards fee-based advisory businesses, and emphasized that LPL has long supported advisors in all business channels, including fee-only RIAs, whether they start their own firm or set up their practice under the firm’s corporate RIA. He said many advisors underestimate the operational lift and regulatory complexity that comes from running an RIA.

“One of the things I think they also haven’t considered is, if they choose to set up their own RIA with another custodian, they’re going to have to go through a repaper event,” Steinmeier said. “It means they’re going to have to engage their clients; they’re going to have to repaper all of their accounts; and they’re going to find some lost efficiency and spending some time actually working through that transition.”

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“Advisors are seeing that we can support them. They keep their community, they keep their support model, they keep that leadership team that they love. They can do that inside of an RIA or on our shared ADV at LPL.”

The firm’s run rate EBITDA is projected to be roughly $120 million at closing and $415 million once fully integrated. They anticipate onboarding and integration costs of $485 million. LPL expects to spend $155 million on technology related to the acquisition, which will be capitalized and amortized over time.

Roughly 75% of Commonwealth’s business is advisory and 25% brokerage, according to an investor presentation. The broker/dealer has client cash balances of about $4 billion. It has retained roughly 98% of its advisor headcount on average over the last five years.

With the close, Commonwealth’s CEO Wayne Bloom joins the LPL management committee as a managing director. Commonwealth Founder Joe Deitch takes on an advisory role to LPL’s Board of Directors.

Post-close, LPL’s pro-forma leverage ratio will be 2.25 times earnings, Audette said on the call, and projected to drop to 2 times by the end of 2026.

Overall, LPL reported net income of $273 million, or $3.40 earnings per share, for the second quarter, up 5% from a year ago. Total revenues were $3.84 billion, up about 31% from a year ago, beating analyst expectations by $60 million, according to Seeking Alpha.

The firm added $18 billion in recruited assets during the quarter, down 24% from a year ago, bringing recruited assets to $161 billion for the trailing 12 months. Steinmeier attributed the decline in recruiting to truncated advisor movement given market volatility and economic uncertainty.