Raymond James runs both channels against the Commonwealth clock

Raymond James added $1.75 billion of client assets in a single week through both channels it runs, the larger piece an Iowa group that will operate as Greenwood Wealth Partners out of Clive, joining the employee advisor channel from D.M. Kelly & Company, the Des Moines broker/dealer where David Lorbiecki has spent 30 years, his career running past three decades. Dan McPhail Jr., David Haas and Willis Gaer come with him, as does practice business manager Holly Ellsworth, and the other move is a $500 million practice in Rochester, N.Y., joining the independent advisor channel from Commonwealth Financial Network. WealthManagement.com reported both moves first.

The Commonwealth piece carries a clock: LPL Financial closed its purchase of Commonwealth in August 2025, and on LPL's prior statements the teams inside are nearing the deadline to move onto LPL's platforms by the end of 2026—roughly three months away. Conversions put sellers on someone else's timetable, so a team that might have spent another year weighing a move instead decides on a platform before the platform is decided for it, and every recruiting desk in the country knows the date.

Raymond James has been one of the most significant beneficiaries of that flow, according to WealthManagement.com, which also reports that the firm raised its recruiting spending over the past year based on its earnings reports. The benchmark sits in the record: last May the firm took on Financial Strategies Retirement Partners, 12 advisors in Bedford, N.H., who oversaw $2.8 billion at Commonwealth. Against that number, this week's $500 million Commonwealth lift is a line item in a queue.

Raymond James brought structure to both negotiations, seating the Iowa team in the employee channel and the Rochester team on the independent side in the same week, which meant it never had to talk a team into the wrong arrangement to keep assets on its platform. The Iowa group left an independent broker/dealer for an employee-channel seat—a direction the industry discusses far less than the breakaway—and Lorbiecki said in a statement that Raymond James's culture, its respect for the team's independence, a wider investment platform, and home-office support helped settle the decision. When a three-decade veteran of one firm cites independence as part of the reason for taking an employee seat, the employee channel is now pitched on retained autonomy rather than back-office scale.

The Iowa book itself is heavier than the average advisory team's: families and business owners, but also foundations, endowments, nonprofits and retirees, with the institutional slice the slowest relationship on that list to rebuild after a move. The roster arrives with a ladder, too—McPhail registered in 2007, Haas in 2008, Gaer entered the industry in 2022—so a practice with a 30-year principal, a mid-career pair, and a recent entrant has someone left to inherit the relationships.

That Raymond James could answer in both directions in the same week is the fact worth holding, because the Iowa group left an independent broker/dealer for an employee channel while the Rochester group left a firm being absorbed into LPL and landed on the independent side of another platform. A house that runs both structures gets a second bid on every team, and in a market where supply arrives on a published schedule, a second bid is the whole advantage.

Scale gives the week its proportion: Commonwealth reported $212.7 billion in regulatory assets under management and 615,215 accounts, while LPL reported $819.1 billion, so the $500 million leaving for Raymond James is roughly a quarter of one percent of the Commonwealth book. The coverage does not put a figure on how much of that book has already converted—only that teams are still moving.

The shape of this week is worth naming precisely, because this is not the block trade that this publication argued was resetting the market when NewEdge moved four $3 billion teams in a single day. It is the scheduled-supply version: two mid-size lifts, through two channels, in one week, sourced from firms whose teams have a reason to be in the market. Raymond James sits on both sides of that trade. August Raymond James lost a $545 million team to FiNet, a sequence we covered at the time, and answered by recruiting a Wells Fargo veteran. A four-person, $160 million Annapolis team that left Commonwealth in August, smaller still, showed the diaspora still flows.

The conversion deadline leaves about 14 weeks, and the biggest Commonwealth lift our coverage documents remains the $2.8 billion New Hampshire team from last May, which suggests the largest decisions in this diaspora sit ahead of the calendar rather than behind it. Watch the count of Commonwealth teams that choose in the fourth quarter, and watch Raymond James's recruiting spend when it next reports; the second number is how the firm pays for the first.