We talked with Jake about:
- How to create exceptional client experiences while adapting to changes
- The power of client referrals for the success and growth of your firm
- The challenges that come along with growth as the financial advisor landscape evolves
About Jake DeKinder:
Jake DeKinder is the head of Client Communication at Dimensional Fund Advisors, where he oversees a broad range of initiatives designed to foster deeper connections with clients. His role encompasses managing conferences, webcasts, industry events, study groups, and communities, ensuring these interactions are both impactful and aligned with client needs. Jake transitioned into this role after years on the sales team, recognizing the need for more structured communication efforts. He leads a team dedicated to integrating direct feedback from advisors into their offerings. Under his leadership, Dimensional’s virtual engagements have thrived, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Featured Resources
Enjoyed This? You’ll also love:
- Navigating and Optimizing the Strengths of Your Team with Gretchen Pisano
- Business Growth Tips for Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Financial Services Business Owners
- Reaching Gen Z: How Financial Services Companies Can Engage and Hire the Next Generation with Mary Wisniewski
Full Audio Transcript:
00:00:00 - 22:20:00
Lauren Hong
All right. Well, Jake, thank you so much for joining us today. Excited to dive in and hear more about you, your role at Dimensional, and specifically trends around what Dimensional is seeing for firms across the board. So, before we dive into all of that, can you just share a little bit about yourself? How did you get into this role, and what are you specifically doing with the channel today?
00:22:00 - 00:42:01
Jake DeKinder
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me on. Looking forward to the conversation. And yeah. So head of client communications, what does that mean? Well, a couple different things fall underneath the role. It's really everything around our conferences, our webcasts we put on, our industry events, our study groups, the communities we do. I think about it kind of like scaling interactions we have with all our clients.
00:42:04 - 00:56:14
Jake DeKinder
And I got into the role after I was on the sales team for a number of years. And you go back to ‘14, ‘15, ‘16, sort of that time period. We started to say, hey, we're doing a lot of this stuff for clients but we maybe need to expand what we're doing, get a little bit more systematic about it.
00:56:16 - 01:10:04
Jake DeKinder
So I moved into that and I have a great team that works with me in those four areas. And I think it's really good because everything we design is based on direct feedback from what we hear from the advisors working with Dimensional, like, hey, if we think about our conferences, this is what we're looking for.
01:10:12 - 01:22:23
Jake DeKinder
We love the fact that you guys are having an increasing presence at industry events we're at, and then certainly the virtual stuff, especially during COVID, was an absolute home run for us. And we're continuing to push on that.
01:22:26 - 01:39:00
Lauren Hong
Super interesting. I love that you guys really listen to what clients need and then are able to act on that. So I also know you run a number of surveys, right? And you're following the trends in the data with what goes along there. What are you seeing from firms? What is some of what the data is telling us?
01:39:02 - 01:57:26
Jake DeKinder
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think a lot of people who are probably listening understand there's been just a massive amount of M&A that's taken place in the industry. So I think that really is the biggest trend. And that brings up a lot of, I think, opportunities but also challenges. With firms, I think the big question I have is are we at an inflection point?
01:57:26 - 02:17:11
Jake DeKinder
I think M&A will still continue but will it continue at the rate we've seen over the last five-plus years? And I think there's a lot of reasons to say maybe it may not. I mean, there's a lot of firms that have already been rolled up, which means you're working with a smaller opportunity set.
02:17:13 - 02:39:19
Jake DeKinder
You've got a situation now where you've got higher interest rates, which obviously plays into any type of deal activity. And I think also people are realizing that, hey, listen, we experienced a lot of growth but we experienced a lot of inorganic growth by rolling up these firms. And we now need to think about what we do at this point and how do we achieve a great client experience and achieve organic growth?
02:39:26 - 02:53:04
Jake DeKinder
I think there's a lot of firms that are saying, hey, there's maybe a few more challenges around this as we switch from inorganic to organic. So those are the interesting trends I think we've seen. And the one, in my opinion, to kind of watch as we go forward.
02:53:07 - 03:09:11
Lauren Hong
Yeah, interesting. We see that as well. So a number of firms where they've gone through massive M&A and then they get to a place where there's operations to unpack. And then how do you continue that growth at that growth clip? So anything else you guys are seeing on the trends piece for firms?
03:09:13 - 03:28:06
Jake DeKinder
We're starting to see one emerge that I think is a really good sign. You know, for years there was a concern about shortage of talent and shortage of young talent that's coming into the industry. And while I think there's still a massive need out there — because you do have a lot of people who have been in the industry for a while who are looking to rotate out and retire at some point — we’ve seen an uptick in younger people coming into the industry.
03:28:08 - 03:45:27
Jake DeKinder
You look at a lot of the financial planning programs that have been developed or are developing at universities. Great sign. We actually saw a tremendous amount of hiring with the firms working with Dimensional through the pandemic. So coming out of it, that was awesome to see.
03:45:29 - 04:03:29
Jake DeKinder
So I think there's still a long way to go. And we definitely need more good people to keep coming into the industry. But that to me is really exciting. And to anybody I talked to who’s coming in, I say, listen, you have a huge opportunity in front of you. There's a huge need for you in the industry.
04:04:02 - 04:27:23
Jake DeKinder
You get to do right by people, to take care of people, because this is incredibly, incredibly important to your clients and your prospects’ futures. And quite frankly, you can make a great living for yourself. And as you progress through the industry, you can achieve a really nice work-life balance. So the financial advice space to me is so attractive for people in their 20s because there's just ample opportunity to have a great, meaningful career.
04:27:26 - 04:40:18
Lauren Hong
I really appreciate what you're saying. You're right. There's been a lot of investment internally within firms as well as from outside organizations to really bring in new talent but then also to be able to retain that talent as well.
04:40:18 - 05:01:25
Jake DeKinder
One other thing, and this is probably an ongoing trend, but just the explosion of different investment choices and different investment options. I think firms are really having to kind of weed through what makes sense. Do we want to try something new?
05:01:25 - 05:21:12
Jake DeKinder
Are there asset classes we need to explore? I think there's a lot of chatter about stuff in private markets, private equity, and private credit. So to me that's nothing new. There's always exciting new products coming about. But that's an ongoing trend I think every firm has to kind of wade through of where do we want to go from an investment standpoint?
05:21:14 - 05:25:08
Lauren Hong
Yep. That's now very fair. Do right by their clients as well.
05:25:08 - 05:26:22
Jake DeKinder
So yeah, for sure.
05:26:28 - 05:38:28
Lauren Hong
With all these trends and things going on, what is Dimensional doing to be able to support advisors, guide them through these conversations and make sure they're really equipped with the resources to be able to help navigate kind of what's ahead?
05:38:28 - 06:03:04
Jake DeKinder
So, if we go back to the first trend on M&A, I think that's something we've had a really good pulse on ever since the trend started. And we've always tried to make sure firms have eyes wide open as they go into it, right? It's not just about necessarily getting the deal done but it's understanding what that's going to mean to the point that you brought it from an operations standpoint, what that's going to be from an investment philosophy standpoint, what that's going to mean from a cultural standpoint.
06:03:06 - 06:23:04
Jake DeKinder
So really, I say having conversations and helping educate firms on what it means to go into this M&A space. We've got events we put on — something like our deals and succession conference — where we'll actually bring in not only our own knowledge but also outside expertise to say, hey, as you go forward with this, these are the things you need to be aware of.
06:23:04 - 06:47:18
Jake DeKinder
These are the resources you can ultimately lean on. And so I think that's great because again, at the end of the day, we want to make sure it comes down to what's the investor experience. Certainly we want the firms to get matched up with the right ones. We want culture maintained. But the biggest thing for us is that these firms that have built great businesses, how do you ensure that whatever transition you go through, your clients are well taken care of?
06:47:20 - 07:09:18
Jake DeKinder
So that's exciting on the M&A front. On the younger advisors coming into the space, one of the things we've always prided ourselves on is taking a very educational approach to investment management, educating around what's going on in the industry, what it means to create that great financial experience. So if you look this year, we'll put on probably 70 or so conferences here in the U.S of different types.
07:09:18 - 07:38:24
Jake DeKinder
Those can be from introductory conferences around investments to communication workshops to practice management symposiums to business development workshops so that education is ongoing. From Dimensional, one of the things I think we've done nicely to help support the advisors in recent years is really get more customized firm training. So we put on Dimensional events but we get asked all the time, hey, can you come in and work with my team around sales training?
07:38:24 - 07:58:21
Jake DeKinder
Can you work around communication training? Can you come in and do future firm exercises so we as an organization can think about what we want to look like three years, five years, 10 years from now? And what do we have to put in place to be successful to do that? So I think that sort of ongoing education, ongoing training, is something we're continuing to ramp up.
07:58:21 - 08:20:20
Jake DeKinder
And I mentioned the virtual aspect coming out of COVID, that's a huge part. We do a lot of in-person stuff. I'm on the road a lot. But we do a lot of virtual stuff as well. So that's an area where I think we're continuing to invest. A lot of the studies that you mentioned, whether it's our benchmarking study, investor study, arming firms with data to empower them to make really good decisions.
08:20:22 - 08:45:13
Jake DeKinder
And then I think on the resources side and on primarily client-ready resources, if you went back about 15 years ago, most of our stuff was much more in the weeds research, deep dive. We've realized that's important and that's in our DNA. But we've really got to help on the investor education and on the communication front, and not just with the training but actually develop resources advisors can use in those conversations.
08:45:15 - 09:02:12
Lauren Hong
Oh, super interesting. I appreciate that you guys are having those real conversations. And to be able to pull them out for leadership. Talking with others and what have you, I often see that folks sometimes want to go down, for example, an M&A route, and they have an opportunity to really unpack that and hear what that looks like and go, that's not the right route for me.
09:02:12 - 09:07:15
Lauren Hong
And so they can really make those shifts before they get too far ahead.
09:07:18 - 09:10:21
Jake DeKinder
Yeah, I would agree with you on that. Yeah. Go ahead.
09:10:23 - 09:29:28
Lauren Hong
Going back to the data conversation, now that you're arming firms with these different tools, are you seeing any kind of the creme de la creme. What are the top firms doing that you see is maybe a successful trend as they look ahead? For instance, I've heard a lot of COI referrals are going away, right?
09:29:28 - 09:41:00
Lauren Hong
How do we diversify lead sources or is it M&A or is it sort of a different bend on that? What are the successful firms — what I’ll call successful growth firms — doing?
09:41:02 - 09:57:18
Jake DeKinder
Yeah. It's a great question. And it's one we get all the time. I do think you still see a huge amount of the growth coming from referrals and a lot of this coming directly from client referrals. I think CIO for referrals is maybe dropping off just a little bit.
09:57:18 - 10:14:27
Jake DeKinder
But if you have strong ones and you can nurture those, those can still be incredibly effective for you. Certainly if we look at anything in the digital space, anything through social, you're starting to see some firms have more and more success there. And you would expect that because that's where people are starting to hang out. That's where people are starting to get their information from.
10:14:27 - 10:38:24
Jake DeKinder
So if you do that well, you'd expect to see some success as well. But again, a big part of it is just coming from the existing client base and from referrals and the firms we see be successful, or ones that put a referral plan in place and actually do something about it. And I know that sounds so basic but I can't tell you how many conversations I've had over the years where you have a great discussion with them.
10:38:24 - 10:57:27
Jake DeKinder
You tee someone up with good referral resources, a good referral program. Maybe it's somebody like Dean Allison. They love it. They're fired up about it. And then you come back six months later and 12 months later and you say, hey, what did you do about it? And I go, I didn't do anything about it. And again, a lot of it's just sort of that basic blocking and tackling you just got to do.
10:57:28 - 11:18:06
Jake DeKinder
So the firms that are having success, yes, they're doing all of these things but they hold themselves accountable to actually go and execute on the stuff. Because again, it doesn't have to be complicated. If you're delivering that level of service, if you're truly delivering value to the client, you should be able to get referrals out of that. That's what you're doing.
11:18:06 - 11:29:08
Jake DeKinder
You're creating a referral experience. You just have to have a systematic way so you make sure across the firm you're asking for the referrals, you're following up on it and you're doing it in all of those meetings.
11:29:11 - 11:33:17
Lauren Hong
Let's see those different touchpoints and be able to create those referral moments as well.
11:33:17 - 11:35:20
Jake DeKinder
Sure, for sure.
11:35:22 - 11:52:07
Lauren Hong
And when we look at the next few years, are there any challenges you see ahead? You've got an upcoming election, a potential looming recession. There's all these things that are going on, not to mention all the data sets you all have, that I would assume would impact that.
11:52:08 - 11:54:22
Lauren Hong
Look ahead. What are you seeing?
11:54:24 - 12:11:19
Jake DeKinder
Yeah, on the investment side and sort of the events that take place, there's always, as I like to say, there's always kind of the crisis of the day that's looming. And it doesn't mean it's not important, right? The U.S. elections are incredibly important for us here as citizens of the U.S. You've got a lot of global tensions, wars that are going on.
12:11:19 - 12:28:19
Jake DeKinder
These are not good things. Do we need to be thinking about recessions and all of these things? Certainly. But there's always that looming next event. So on the investment side, there's nothing necessarily that says like, oh, we need to change up what we're doing or anything there. If you know Dimensional, we're pretty consistent on it.
12:28:23 - 12:45:20
Jake DeKinder
Now, the one thing I will say is that we've definitely moved away from this idea of it's in-market prices. Don't worry about it. Don't pay attention to it. I don't think that's a satisfying response for investors. You have to be able to make some intelligent comments about it. You have to be able to sort of converse and let people share what's stressing them out.
12:45:22 - 13:22
Jake DeKinder
But then you want to kind of move them down a path of, but we've looked into it. Here's what our approach is. If you think about the trends that are going on and potential challenges you see ahead, I don't know if they're challenges but here's a couple things I think about.
13:27 - 13:23:07
Jake DeKinder
Let's talk a little bit about fees within the industry. And a couple of things you've seen, you've seen custodial fees I think pressed down quite a bit, especially as firms have gotten larger and scale the ability to access the markets, the cost of that has come down. You look at asset management fees and certainly here at Dimensional, we've lowered our fees dramatically.
13:23:07 - 13:39:14
Jake DeKinder
And I think that's okay. You have to respond to industry trends. And we know there's been a move toward indexing. Although you're starting to see that kind of shift back here. I do wonder about the advisor fee. Now that said, for the last 15 or 20 years, people have been making the same argument of there'll be fee compression, there'll be fee competition.
13:39:16 - 14:01:25
Jake DeKinder
For the most part, you haven't really seen it. I mean, you have to come down a little bit. Sure, but people have needed to continue to expand the services they deliver and the value to maintain those fees. So that's another thing people need to have on their radars. And I think they probably do. One of the things I wonder about is what we just talked about — M&A — we talked about all this consolidation that went on.
14:01:27 - 14:23:07
Jake DeKinder
And if you go back to when we started the advisor business at Dimensional about 35 years ago, you had a very concentrated industry, right? You had a couple of really big players. They sort of dominated the market. And then there was this idea of this independent, fee-only advisor that was starting to emerge. And so you really had fragmentation, good fragmentation within the industry for several decades.
14:23:09 - 14:44:07
Jake DeKinder
Now we're back and we're seeing consolidation again. And I think industries go through this natural sort of fragmentation and consolidation. So it's nothing special to financial advisors. It happens in a lot of different industries. But that does bring up questions of what is that going to mean in terms of the professionals you have inside of the organization?
14:44:07 - 14:57:02
Jake DeKinder
You know, we talked about, hey, if you're going to roll up a bunch of firms, if you're going to make yourself bigger, how do you maintain culture? How do you make sure it's still a place people want to work? What's the impact of private equity? What's the expectation for growth rates? How am I going to get organic growth out of it?
14:57:04 - 15:25:17
Jake DeKinder
And so I do think a trend you want to watch and a challenge, I think for some larger firms, is how do you ensure whatever firms you brought in, you maintain culture? And how do you ensure that 32-, 33-, 35-year-old advisor who was with a $3 or $400 million firm and was really happy, and now they're in a large organization, is still happy within a larger organization, and we're starting to see some breakaway from those big firms.
15:25:19 - 15:41:02
Jake DeKinder
And I don't want to say that bigger doesn't mean you can't deliver a great client experience. I just think you have to have it on the forefront. And there will be some advisors who say, I want to work for that small or medium-sized firm. I want to start my own thing. I don't want to be a part of a large organization.
15:41:02 - 15:52:02
Jake DeKinder
So I think it's an exciting trend to watch, and one we're definitely seeing a little bit more of quarter to quarter as we're out there having conversations.
15:52:04 - 15:58:23
Lauren Hong
Yep. I see that as well. And just because we're a big organization doesn't mean you can't have a great culture too, right?
15:58:24 - 16:26
Jake DeKinder
Completely. Okay.
16:29 - 16:14:27
Lauren Hong
Yeah a lot of pieces to untangle. All right. So I want to just shift a little bit. I want to talk about Dimensional 360. So do you mind explaining for folks who are not familiar with Dimensional 360? What is it? And, how can we learn more about this platform?
16:14:29 - 16:36:21
Jake DeKinder
Yeah. So Dimensional 360 really brings together, I think, everything we've built out over the last three-plus decades on the service and the resources and the support for financial professionals. I think about Dimensional 360 as everything beyond the investment solutions, the investment products we bring to client relationships. So three big buckets in that area are investments, communication, and strategy.
16:36:23 - 16:54:08
Jake DeKinder
When we say investments, it's not just the investment solutions or the products, right? It's the research. It's the thought leadership. It's the analytics. It's some of the investment tools we've built. Something like our expanded SMA offering and the technology interface and the reporting that goes behind. And beyond that, it's the UMA offering we rolled out.
16:54:08 - 17:13:29
Jake DeKinder
So you've got all these things on investments that can help people inside of their business. Once you get the investment piece of it dialed, you have to figure out how you're going to go talk about it. And that can be talking about your investment approach or it's answering a lot of the common client questions that are going to come in around recessions, geopolitical events, inflation, elections, all of those.
17:14:04 - 17:14:21
Lauren Hong
Events of the day.
17:14:21 - 17:31:21
Jake DeKinder
Yes, it's the news. It's quite frankly a lot of the conversations advisors are actually having. Let's be realistic, there aren't that many clients who walk in and say tell me more, tell me more about the size premium or tell me more about the value premium, right? It's important but those aren't the questions people are getting.
17:31:21 - 17:47:18
Jake DeKinder
So that's a communication bucket. And if you got your investments dialed, you know how to talk about it. You're probably going to have some business success. And that's where the strategy piece comes into it. So all of the things we do around our benchmarking study helps firms say, hey, I'm a $500 million firm. I want to grow.
17:47:18 - 18:07:18
Jake DeKinder
Tell me what a $1 billion firm looks like. It's the investor study we run to say, hey, we've got over 80, 90,000 data points, survey responses from investors all over the world saying this is what's important about a relationship with a financial advisor, powerful data we can use. It's some of the M&A stuff we talked about.
18:07:18 - 18:20:14
Jake DeKinder
It's the future firm stuff. It's the visioning exercises. So you put all of this together, the investments, the communication, and strategy. And it's really all designed to just support that financial professional in what they're trying to deliver for their clients.
18:20:16 - 18:26:04
Lauren Hong
And where can folks learn more about that? You have to be in a Dimensional firm to be able to get access to that?
18:26:06 - 18:43:25
Jake DeKinder
Yeah, if you want to read a little bit more about it, you can go on to our public site, dfa dot com, and you can take a look at some of the information that's on there. But certainly we have a password-protected site. And I think a lot of the deeper stuff we start to do with firms are definitely ones that are working with us a little bit more comprehensively.
18:43:25 - 19:06:19
Jake DeKinder
Again, we're a for-profit business like anybody else. And we want to work with firms or it makes business sense there. But it doesn't really matter what sort of type of firm you are or what channel you may operate in. Dimensional 360 is designed so any firm that's looking to deliver a great client experience and quite frankly, leverage 35 years of experience from a global asset manager like Dimensional.
19:06:21 - 19:11:29
Jake DeKinder
They can lean into it. And as I always say, I promise you, you're going to find stuff in there that's going to help you in your business.
19:12:01 - 19:17:18
Lauren Hong
Absolutely. And is there anything you want to touch on that we have not covered today?
19:17:20 - 19:32:20
Jake DeKinder
No, I'm just really excited about where the industry is going. I think there's all of these challenges out there and you read a lot of I don't want to say a lot but sometimes I feel like it can be a little bit negative. And people pick on what's going wrong in the industry.
19:32:20 - 19:56:00
Jake DeKinder
But you look at the cost of good financial advice and quite frankly, good investment management, it's come down. And that's a great thing. You look at how much more educated investors are about what's available to them and what's important. That's out there. You look at the experience that really goes from the wirehouses to the independent broker dealers to the RIAs to the banks.
19:56:06 - 20:17:13
Jake DeKinder
All of them are looking to deliver a great client experience, and I think they really are. So I'm incredibly optimistic about where this industry is at, where it's going, what the potential is. And again, as long as we keep our focus on the investor, as long as all of us keep our focus on that and know that's why we're waking up every day and doing what we're doing, I get really fired up about this stuff, right?
20:17:13 - 20:19:06
Lauren Hong
You take good care of people and do good work.
20:19:06 - 20:21:01
Jake DeKinder
So exactly.
20:21:03 - 20:36:22
Lauren Hong
Excellent. Well, Jake, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing more about what's happening, what you all are seeing at Dimensional not only with the different studies you have going on, the trends, what you're doing about it. We touched on Dimensional 360 quite a bit. Really appreciate your time today. And for folks, we will include links as well.
20:36:25 - 20:40:11
Lauren Hong
And a transcript below for more details. So thank you again.
20:40:13 - 20:45:25
Jake DeKinder
Great. Thank you.
