LPL Financial is committed to providing timely service to our clients. We recognize the importance of preparing for various disaster scenarios that could hamper our ability to provide service. LPL Financial has taken aggressive steps to provide for business contingency and continuity planning under a variety of potential scenarios. We continue to evaluate our continuity plans and take the necessary actions to ensure the proper resources are available to provide for the recovery and timely resumption of critical business operations to internal business units, third party business partners, and clients.

LPL Financial Business Environment

Headquarters and Staff

LPL Financial has its headquarters and operations staff located in three principal locations - Boston, Charlotte, and San Diego. The Boston office serves as the primary site for our Executive office, Legal and Research. These business units, while vital to the company on a continuing basis, are not considered mission-critical for the daily back-office operation of our business. In the event of a disaster that would make the Boston office unserviceable, the San Diego office is its alternative facility.

Mission–Critical Departments

Both the Charlotte and San Diego offices serve as primary locations for our mission-critical departments, including: Operations, Trade Execution and Processing, and the Service Center. Each office serves as the backup for the other. There are documented and tested plans in place to provide for a fail-over between the two sites. LPL Financial Production Data Center is located in a second and distinct Charlotte location. The alternate Data Center is located within the LPL Financial San Diego location.

  • The Production Data Center facility is located approximately two miles from the Charlotte office location.
  • The Production Data Center infrastructure is fully redundant in terms of power, network and
    equipment.
  • The five buildings at the San Diego location also have fully redundant networking and telecommunications systems.
  • There is redundant connectivity across Boston, Charlotte, and San Diego.

LPL Financial brokerage computing platform is operated in another geographical region of the United States by an unaffiliated third-party vendor. None of the scenarios presented in this document would pose a threat of business disruption to this remote site. The third-party vendor has a complete business continuity plan that includes alternative sites and recovery times within four hours.

Business Scenario Preparedness
Single Building Disruption

If LPL Financial loses the ability to perform business in one of our buildings, recovery staff associated with mission-critical functions will begin processing at our alternate processing site (either Charlotte, San Diego or Boston, depending on the impacted department). We have plans in place for this relocation and they are tested periodically. Recovery time objectives vary based on the criticality of the function that is disrupted.

Campus Disruption

If LPL Financial loses the ability to perform business at either the San Diego or Charlotte locations, mission critical San Diego functions would be failed over to our Charlotte office and vice versa. Staff associated with non-mission critical functions will be relocated to an alternative site (e.g., hotel, home) in an unaffected area. We have plans in place for this relocation and they are tested periodically. Recovery time objectives vary based on the criticality of each function.

Remote Data Center Disruption

If LPL Financial loses the ability to perform business in our Production Data Center in Charlotte, mission critical systems will be recovered to our San Diego Data Center. We have plans in place for this recovery and they are tested periodically. Mission-critical systems recovery is expected within four hours.

Conclusion

Please be aware that while we have detailed plans in place, we cannot guarantee that we will be successful in achieving recovery in the times noted above. For example, we may not be able to implement a plan during a disaster as quickly as we expect, or there may be disasters that we have been unable to anticipate and for which we have no plan. Additionally, if parts of our plan are dependent upon third parties, we will have no control over the success or failure of the third party to respond appropriately to the challenges posed at the time of the disaster. Our continuity plans are periodically updated and modified. Updated plan summaries will be made available on our website (www.lpl.com) and can be obtained by submitting a written request.