Dimensional Fund Advisors

It is National Financial Planning Month in the United States. Dimensional believes that no matter where you are in the world, financial advisors are key to the investor experience. Here, we share some attributes of great financial advisors.

A highlight of Dimensional’s Advanced Conference week is hosting the Global Advisor Tour. This year’s tour included 21 advisors (from eight different countries) who, in addition to attending the conference, met with several firms in both Dallas and Austin. The group was consistently impressed by the generosity of the advisor community in sharing experiences about their businesses, successes, and challenges. They were also inspired by the firms and people they met and walked away with a realization that significant growth comes, at least in part, from taking good care of your clients.

Stephanie Hui, who serves as Dimensional’s Lead Counsel for Public Policy, participated in a panel discussion at FT Live’s Future of Asset Management conference in New York. Financial Times editor Brooke Masters moderated the session, which included SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda and other industry experts. The conversation focused on the SEC’s regulatory agenda and the tools that support industry innovation, such as exemptive relief, which was instrumental in the launch of the first ETFs. Dimensional is one of more than two dozen firms that have applied for exemptive relief from the SEC to be able to offer ETF share classes of mutual funds to investors. Prior to joining Dimensional’s legal team, Hui was a branch chief with the SEC’s Division of Investment Management.

Another Dimensional Advanced Conference in the books! Always fun to present alongside my friend and Co-CIO Savina Rizova and talk with so many attendees about how Dimensional goes from idea to inception, with a focus on tax-managed solutions. If you’re a financial professional and you’re curious to learn more about Dimensional’s innovation and evolution, reach out to us for a conversation. We love this stuff!

Take an interactive look at how markets have fared surrounding elections and explore nearly a century of presidential and congressional terms. https://lnkd.in/gCpz4tBB

During a recent panel discussion about the future of investment delivery and how to make decisions about outsourcing, Dimensional Global Head of Investment Solutions Marlena Lee encouraged advisors to first determine their investment philosophy and then select a solution that fits with it. “Then [it’s] figuring out how to dedicate the advisor’s time and align it with where you think you can add the most value: What are the things that your clients actually want to hear from you about?” she added. Lee joined Stephen Kaplan of J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Dana D’Auria of Envestnet for the Future Proof panel discussion.

Read up on the highlights of the third quarter in Dimensional’s latest Market Review: https://lnkd.in/dKDMXEyX

Dimensional Co-CEO and Co-CIO Gerard O’Reilly was invited to participate in an “Innovation in ETFs” panel at Georgetown University hosted by the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy. The wide-ranging discussion of industry developments covered technological advancements, regulatory considerations, and evolving investor preferences. CNBC’s Jesse Pound moderated the conversation, which included SEC Division of Investment Management Director Natasha Vij Greiner and BlackRock’s Samara Epstein Cohen. Georgetown Professor Reena Aggarwal introduced the session, which was part of the Financial Markets Quality Conference. Aggarwal is the founding director of the Psaros Center and serves as an Independent Director on the Boards of Dimensional’s US mutual funds and ETFs.

Coffee drinkers often have strong preferences about the composition of their favorite pick-me-up. Likewise, investors tend to prefer a specific structure for their portfolios, based on factors such as the number of years they have until retirement and the level of risk they’re willing to take on. 

Dimensional was proud to be a sponsor of the third annual Future Proof, a wealth-management festival in Huntington Beach, California. As part of the event, the firm took part in various activities, including a panel discussion about scaling financial advisors’ businesses, a live “Standard Deviations” podcast recording, media interviews, networking opportunities, and daily sound meditations to help attendees “tune out the noise” that often comes with investing.