Expatriate Financial Services, a Las Vegas-based registered investment advisor specializing in advising U.S. citizens working overseas, has packed its bags after LPL Financial recently finalized the acquisition of its parent RIA.
Lance Roberts, CEO of Expatriate Financial Services, said he and his team of three would have stayed with LPL after it acquired its parent firm, The Investment Center, a Bedminster, N.J.-based RIA. LPL, however, wasn’t interested in keeping the group’s particular niche of U.S. expatriates and some international clients, Roberts said. With that, he decided to file his own Form ADV.
“I did not want to abandon all my clients and my book of business,” he said. “I was not going to walk away from all that.”
LPL did not respond to request for verification. The San Deigo-based broker/dealer announced it had closed the acquisition of The Investment Center on March 11, noting it had welcomed the firm’s “160 high-performing advisors to our network.” LPL said it had onboarded about $4 billion of brokerage and advisory assets, with another $3 billion coming in the months ahead.
Advisor Roberts had been an international branch manager for The Investment Center since 2004, building a book of clients that included U.S. citizens who teach overseas and the schools that provide them with 401(k) plans.
The newly minted RIA CEO, who is 78 years old, said he wanted to continue serving those clients for the coming years before organizing his own retirement.
“I’m carrying over as many as want to come,” he said. “But we’re still in the early days; it’s a work in progress.”
Roberts said advising expatriate clients has meant working for years with the now-trending approach of being a “holistic” advisor, as they work across investing, financial planning, and tax preparation.
“As expatriates, their tax situation is different, so I got into doing taxes as part of my financial practice back in the 1990s when I had investment clients who were using a different tax preparer back in the states,” he said. “I was helping them to capital gains harvest using their foreign exclusions, and they were being told, ‘Wait a minute, this man is churning your account,’ and I would have to constantly explain that wasn’t the case.”
Now that Expatriate Financial Services will operate as an RIA instead of a commission-based brokerage, clients will not have to pay fees on the sales and buybacks that happen with tax loss harvesting. Roberts said he would now be included in his firm’s services, which he sees as one advantage of being solo.
The advisor anticipates bringing over $200 million in client assets, about half of which will come from the 401(k) plans with international schools.
Roberts established the 401(k) advisement business in the mid-2000s. After researching qualified retirement plans, he realized that international schools could set up plans for U.S. teachers working overseas to create further tax advantages, this time for their retirement savings.
After pursuing legal guidance and finding a 401(k) provider who works internationally, Roberts brought the idea to the schools. Currently, Expatriate Financial Services has 50 schools worldwide offering a 401(k) plan to teachers with U.S. citizenship.
Roberts is also looking to hire and train advisors for his practice, ideally with experience living internationally, which he sees as important for serving the client base.
Once the new RIA is well established, he says he will be looking to sell the practice so he can retire to “a well-deserved time with my grandkids in Hawaii.”
