Three advisor teams land at Cetera, LPL and Wells Fargo FiNet

Three advisor teams moved to broker-dealer platforms on October 5, 2026: Cetera Summit took the $185 million Fitzgerald Financial Group from Commonwealth Financial Network, LPL added Lakewood Wealth Management's three advisors from Cambridge Investment Research, and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network took the seven-advisor Cullman/Holt Group from UBS.

The Cetera move carried the day's only disclosed asset figure among the three team liftouts, $185 million, and brought advisors Tatyana Shevchuk, Gary Bolno, Doug Kramer and John Fitzgerald. The entry names four people but does not state a total team headcount, so the asset number is the only scale marker for that move.

LPL's addition from Cambridge was recorded as a three-advisor liftout under the Lakewood Wealth Management name, with Justin Pandy, Charles Dobben and Harrison Kennard named. No asset figure accompanied the entry, leaving the move harder to size, but LPL received a full team from another independent broker-dealer.

The Cullman/Holt Group's move to Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network came from UBS and was the largest disclosed team of the day, at seven advisors. Conor Holt and Shannon Borton are the named members; the record does not identify the other five. A seven-advisor group leaving UBS for Wells' independent channel shows that the independent broker-dealer model can also pull from bank-owned firms, not only from other independent networks.

PWD's tracking shows the Retirement Planning Group left Avantax Planning Partners for Cetera Planning Partners the same day, with advisor moves also logged at Prime Capital Financial, RFG Advisory and Tocqueville Asset Management. Cetera's Planning Partners entry shares the Cetera name with the Summit liftout, meaning Cetera added both a team from Commonwealth and a separate Avantax-sourced practice within a single recruiting day.

Each team landed at a platform that operates as a broker-dealer network rather than a single advisory firm: Cetera's Summit and Planning Partners channels, LPL Financial, and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network. That concentration shows teams moving between networks while networks consolidate the movement.

A team leaving Commonwealth for Cetera, another leaving Cambridge for LPL, and a third leaving UBS for FiNet means the recruiting contest is being fought at the platform level, where custody, compliance and practice management sit under one corporate owner. The sources are spread across independent and bank-owned firms; the destinations are concentrated among three platforms.

The three destinations share a structure more than a size. Cetera recorded two separate channel names, LPL a corporate platform, and Wells FiNet an independent channel; the differences matter less than the fact that all three are platform destinations that added teams on the same day.

The Retirement Planning Group's move from Avantax Planning Partners to Cetera Planning Partners was a small entry compared with the three liftouts, and it still landed at the same category of destination at the same moment. A platform that absorbs both a large team and a separate practice on the same day is recruiting across the size spectrum, not just chasing the largest groups.

Prime Capital Financial, RFG Advisory and Tocqueville Asset Management each logged advisor moves on October 5. RFG Advisory appears as the destination in its entries; Prime Capital's entry shows the same firm name on both sides, differing only by capitalization, which suggests an internal registration or repapering rather than a clean external move. Tocqueville's entry lists only a destination name. Those records are thin; they capture movement, not always the full client book behind it.

The day's entries show teams moving into platform models, with three team liftouts a meaningful single-day count and each involving a team choosing a broker-dealer platform as its new home. The sources were Commonwealth, Cambridge and UBS.

The Cetera move is the only team liftout with a disclosed asset figure, and that number is enough to show the Fitzgerald team is substantial but not enough to compare the three liftouts apples to apples. LPL's Lakewood entry gives a headcount, not assets; Wells' Cullman/Holt entry gives a headcount, not assets. The absence of asset data can make the LPL and Wells moves look smaller than they are, because a seven-advisor practice may carry more than the disclosed figure, but the record does not say so. Seven advisors and three advisors moved as units, and the named team members were part of those units.

LPL and Wells Fargo FiNet stand out because they pulled from opposite corners of the industry: LPL from an independent broker-dealer and Wells from UBS. Cetera's two moves drew from Commonwealth and Avantax, both independent networks. That mixture suggests the platform model is drawing from both the independent and the employee worlds, and Cetera's day was largely a network-to-network consolidation story.

The Cetera entries are useful because they appear under two different destination names: Summit Financial Networks for the team and Cetera Planning Partners for the Retirement Planning Group. That structure suggests a multi-channel recruiting operation rather than a single brand; a reader who sees only the Summit liftout misses the second Cetera entry on the same day.

The next data to watch is whether these teams' assets actually transfer and whether the source firms respond with counter-recruiting. The October 5 record tells us about the movement of names and disclosed book size, not about client retention after a liftout. A team can move and still lose a portion of its clients to the old firm; the record does not show that outcome, only the first step.

Whether the concentration continues past October 5 is the larger question. A single day shows direction, not a permanent shift. If the same destination names keep showing up through the fourth quarter, a daily observation becomes a quarterly trend.