Fast Track: Linsco exec helping brokers follow the money

Most people leave Los Angeles for San Diego to find a quieter, less complicated life.

Bruce P. Kardon, senior vice president of the advanced resources group at Linsco/Private Ledger Corp., left a senior position with Financial Network in Torrance, Calif., for the land of Padres and Point Loma to make life simpler for LPL’s 3,600 brokers.

If he succeeds in his mission, reps for the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer, based in San Diego and Boston, will be far better equipped to negotiate the tricky waters of succession planning and estate services.

Mr. Kardon, 52, is molding a 10-person team of certified public accountants, lawyers and other life insurance specialists who can serve as a library for the company’s brokers. The team fields on average between 200 and 300 calls from LPL brokers every day – one reason why Mr. Kardon plans to continue to add staff.

Before his arrival last June, the company had only one lawyer and pockets of expertise loosely scattered around the corporate offices, company sources say.

But LPL’s CEO, Todd Robinson, told Mr. Kardon that keeping control of the “trillions of dollars passing from generation to generation” was becoming a major focus of the business.

Mr. Kardon already is making his mark – having increased the company’s succession-related business 58% since his arrival, according to James Putnam, managing director of national sales for LPL.

But the program has side benefits too.

“Recruits that come here are very impressed,” Mr. Kardon says. “Many of them may be coming from somewhere and think they’re losing this kind of support. They’re very relieved to see we have this kind of capability.”

Michael C. Timmons, senior marketing officer with Centrelink Insurance and Financial Services in Irvine, Calif., says Mr. Kardon brings far more than a solid knowledge of advanced planning issues to LPL.

“He has a fervent, almost altruistic, passion to build a cutting-edge professional resource community for the high-end financial planner,” he says. “I’ve worked with LPL for nine years, so I’ve seen the improvement he’s made. It has been pretty outstanding.”

Mr. Putnam says he is also impressed with the depth and breadth of Mr. Kardon’s capabilities.

“You sit down with Bruce for a half-hour, and you want to go out and talk to people,” he says. “He blends that unique quality of being very technical and being able to relate that to people, and how to capture that additional business.”

Mr. Kardon’s blended skills reflect his education. He had double majors in psychology and political science as an undergraduate at the University of California Los Angeles, and he received his law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law, also in Los Angeles.

That background has brought Mr. Kardon more offers than a prom queen. His resume lists stints at Transamerica Life Insurance Co., Northwestern Mutual and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.

“I’ve been recruited to my last seven positions – creating these kinds of advanced planning capabilities,” he says.

But this is also his second straight pioneering effort, which makes him inclined to stay put for a while.

“My expectation is to be here,” he says. “This is hard work to start something from scratch all the time.”