Third-party investment provider upgrades wholesale push to advisory firms. Dunham & Associates, a sub-advised fund provider to private investment consultants, has launched an incentive program for its best clients. The Quarter Club is meant to align qualified introducing brokerages and registered investment advisories (RIAs) with Dunham in a “strategic partnership” based on providing Dunham with wholesale leads in exchange for marketing assistance and several advisor-level benefits, including stepped-up compensation and reduced-cost health-care and benefit services.

“We do not want the club to be all things to all people,” says Keith Gregg, Dunham’s head of sales. Rather, he says, the Quarter Club is meant to be “the best to a limited number of strategic partners.”

In fact, San Diego-based Dunham wants to limit membership in its Quarter Clubs to 25 firms – and it already has 16 on board.

Quid pro quo

One of the biggest incentives to membership in the Quarter Club is lower health-care costs to its member firms’ advisors, says Gregg, a former sales executive Wachovia Securities. “Having spent a lot of time in the indie world, I know that a lot of [independent advisors] have their guys or gals working at Starbucks just so they can get health benefits,” he says. “It's one thing for [an investment-platform provider] to offer a great line-up of products and services; it's quite another to offer rare and distinctive value.” Gregg says the health-care savings to select member-firm advisors could be as much as 30%.

Dunham says that other benefits of membership in the Quarter Club are enhanced compensation to member-firm advisors based on assets under management with Dunham, dedicated home-office and field support, and, for member firms’ top fee-based advisors, quarterly business-development and practice-management training and weekly sales and marketing strategies.

Quarter Club member firms get a seat on Dunham’s advisor board, invitations to that board’s annual meeting in San Diego, and Dunham’s support for the firms’ conferences and meetings.

Broker-dealers and RIAs in good standing with their respective regulators and at least $25 million in client assets in Dunham funds are eligible for membership in the Quarter Club. Member firms have to designate their top 25% of fee-based, managed-money advisors, actively promote Dunham as a strategic partner, and agree to meet with Dunham brass every quarter to make sure the “strategic partnership” is running smoothly. –FWR

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