Happiness Wealth Management, led by ex-Merrill Lynch Advisor Mike Duffy, has joined LPL Financial’s broker-dealer and RIA platform.
Through its relationship with Swag, it has access to LPL’s strategic wealth management platform and model portfolios, in addition to other LPL managed account and asset allocation programs, according to Swag’s form ADV.
Prior to founding the firm, Duffy had been a senior financial advisor at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and its parent company Bank of America, beginning in November 1999, according to his Finra Brokercheck page.
He had been an advisor at Citicorp Investment Services for roughly three years before joining Bank of America.
In June, LPL announced it had onboarded three advisor teams totaling $845 million in client assets, including Rockline Wealth Management, ex-Nationwide advisor Christopher Manci and his team and Flood Financial.
The announcement of the additions followed the breakaway of Tampa, Florida-based hybrid RIA Independent Financial Advisors (IFP), which made an April announcement that it would split from LPL over the following 12-months.
At the time, IFP had 568 advisors, $9.49 billion discretionary assets under management and $27.4 million non-discretionary assets.
Separately, in August 2017 LPL purchased the four-broker dealers that make up National Planning Holdings (NPH): Invest Financial Corporation, Investment Centers of America, National Planning Corporation and SII Investments.
NPH had been an affiliate of Jackson National Life Insurance Company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential plc.
Leading up to the sale, the four combined networks had a combined 2,300 advisors who oversaw $120 billion in assets under management.
As of May, LPL brought on 1,894 advisors and $69.4 billion between brokerage and advisory assets from the NPH deal, according to an earnings release from the firm.