LPL Recruits Praxis Financial Partners’ $1.1B FiNet Team in Alpharetta

LPL Financial said Monday that Praxis Financial Partners, an Alpharetta, Georgia planning practice that had been affiliated with Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, has moved onto LPL’s broker-dealer and registered investment adviser platforms with about $1.1 billion in advisory, brokerage and retirement-plan assets.

LPL Financial said Monday that Praxis Financial Partners, an Alpharetta, Georgia planning practice that had been affiliated with Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, has moved onto LPL’s broker-dealer and registered investment adviser platforms with about $1.1 billion in advisory, brokerage and retirement-plan assets. The figure, LPL noted in its release, is an approximation drawn from year-end 2025 holdings the team supplied.

LPL’s announcement names four Praxis partners now on its platforms: Christian, holding the CFP mark; Loyd and Gentry, each holding the CIMA mark; and Dion. FINRA BrokerCheck confirms the registrations. Scott N. Christian (CRD 2003714) and Cecil C. Loyd III (CRD 1340611) list LPL broker and adviser registrations effective Sept. 14, 2026. Jay Gentry (CRD 2111101) shows LPL dates of Sept. 15, 2026. Matthew Dion (CRD 4494977) has an LPL broker mark of Sept. 14 and an investment-adviser mark of Sept. 15. BrokerCheck branch detail for Loyd and Gentry points to 219 Roswell Street, Suite 150, Alpharetta—the same street address that appeared on Praxis’s Wells Fargo FiNet office materials.

Christian and Loyd built Praxis in 2013 after leaving Merrill, LPL said; BrokerCheck backs the timeline. Both men show Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network registrations beginning May 2013 and ending in fall 2026, with long prior Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith runs in Alpharetta—Christian’s broker registration there from December 1989 through May 2013, Loyd’s from February 1985 through May 2013. WealthManagement.com, citing BrokerCheck, put Dion’s Wells tenure near 16 years—the longest among the four—with Christian and Loyd each around 13 years in the bank channel and Gentry near six; the registration histories line up with those spans. Dion’s record shows Wells Fargo Clearing Services registrations dating to 2007–2009 in the Atlanta/Roswell area before a March 2024 move onto FiNet with Praxis, while Gentry’s FiNet registration starts June 2020 after earlier distribution work at OppenheimerFunds Distributor (2015–2019). LPL’s release dates Gentry’s arrival at the practice to 2020 and Dion’s to 2024.

Praxis describes itself as a planning-led firm whose clients include owners of privately held businesses, people retiring from corporations, executives and families spanning more than one generation, with relationships in 24 states. The LPL release credits a six-person support bench (named there as Smith, Hirschler, Presley, Rick, Harris and Eashwaran, with given names Jody, Zac, Ashlyn, Ellen, Seleena and Parvathy respectively), and says the partners shopped more than a dozen platforms before picking LPL for open-architecture flexibility, planning tools and the chance to retain ownership of the practice. Chief Growth Officer Marc Cohen welcomed the group in the firm statement; WealthManagement.com noted LPL did not immediately break out how large its RIA channel is in advisor or asset terms beyond firmwide tallies LPL cites—more than 32,000 affiliated advisors and brokerage-plus-advisory assets near $2.6 trillion.

The Alpharetta exit sits inside a broader 2026 pattern of FiNet teams testing independent and hybrid homes. InvestmentNews documented Horizon Wealth Management Group in Wichita—Bill Wagner, Scott Sennett and Andrew Kocukov—leaving FiNet for LPL in September with about $385 million, following Emerald Legacy Advisors’ roughly $140 million Kansas City FiNet-to-LPL move in April and Summit Ridge Financial Advisors’ about $380 million Sun Valley, Idaho shift to LPL in July. Separately, WealthManagement.com and Carson Group reported that Doyle and Loughman Wealth Management, a Hanover, New Hampshire FiNet practice with about $1.76 billion, joined Carson’s integrated community earlier in the year. Wells Fargo, for its part, has kept recruiting into FiNet even as some large independents leave: WealthManagement.com wrote that the bank is readying a rebuilt, fee-only RIA custody offering that some FiNet advisors would seed before the end of 2026, then open to outside advisors in 2027.

For LPL, Praxis adds a Southeast ensemble already operating as a named partnership rather than a solo breakaway. For Wells Fargo’s independent channel, the departure is another reminder that FiNet’s largest practices can still shop the IBD and RIA marketplace when ownership, technology stack and succession matter as much as the bank’s custody roadmap. Registrations now show the Praxis quartet under LPL as of mid-September; how much of the $1.1 billion figure transfers will be measured in the months after those CRD dates, not on announcement day.