Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
September 01, 2008 at 04:00 AM
Recently appointed head of the Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) channel for JPMorgan Funds, Steve Lundquist will be responsible for the business strategy of the institutional advisor group and managing the sales and national accounts teams. After leaving Fidelity Investments, Lundquist joined JPMorgan in 2001, when the firm’s entry into the intermediary channel was just taking place. Staff Editor Kara P. Stapleton spoke with Lundquist in late July about his new position.
Can you talk about your business strategy for the channel?
There’s really three pieces. The first thing to look at is that we deliver insight and market intelligence that we believe is unique from our organization to the channel. You’ll see us try and capitalize on that in a couple of different ways. One of the things that we hold on an annual basis is our Wealth Management Symposium. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-120 of the top advisors across the investment advisor channel will come spend a couple of days with academics speaking about such things as asset allocation principles, the use of alternatives in portfolios, structured notes, market and economic commentary, and so forth. We just did our tenth annual a couple of months ago. In addition to that we host three Alternative Investment Forums.
Secondly, we have nine relationship managers that work on three different teams representing the east, west, and central parts of the U.S. There are about 1,400 advisors in the space, and we’re trying to target the top 1,100 or so, which would get about $200 million in assets under management (AUM). The team-based approach is more like our managers as consultants to the advisors. They’re getting out there and trying to understand and work with these advisors in regard to their business, how they implement portfolios, asset allocation design, and so forth.
