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Dan Wheeler

Industry Spotlight > RIAs

Dan Wheeler, Influential DFA Leader, Dies at 77

By John Manganaro

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What You Need to Know

  • Dan Wheeler is widely known for helping build the modern financial advisor community and for changing investment advice in retail markets.
  • Friends and family say Wheeler was always passionate about doing the right thing for clients and colleagues.
  • Advisor industry experts say millions of investors now enjoy fee-based advice and low-cost funds because of his work.

Dan Wheeler, the founder of the Dimensional Fund Advisors Financial Advisor Services group who is widely credited with bringing modern portfolio theory to the community of fee-only financial advisors, has died. He was 77.

Wheeler resigned from DFA in October 2010.

His cause of death has not been publicly revealed, but Wheeler’s friends and family confirmed the news in a flood of posts on LinkedIn and Twitter, and major media outlets like the Financial Times quickly began publishing obituaries recalling both his influence on the investment advisory industry and the many twists and turns Wheeler’s professional life had taken.

Writing to ThinkAdvisor about the news, retirement income expert Alex Murguia said that most people in the industry know of DFA and its success in the advisory space — but not everyone understands just how influential Wheeler was.

“I can say with full confidence that, without Dan, there is no DFA in the space,” Murguia said. “He was a true giant and advocate for advisors and their consumers. He was a larger-than-life personality and as much a part of DFA’s success as anyone. There are so many Dan stories floating around and his influence reverberates.”

As Murguia and others are emphasizing, throughout his career, Wheeler helped build the advisor community and changed investment advice in retail markets, working to transform what was a broker-driven system into one centered on financial education and coaching.

After leaving DFA, Wheeler remained deeply passionate about the need for change up until his death, his friends and family say. To that end, he created a blog, WheelerWrites.com, dedicated to speaking “self-evident truths that get buried by those whose self-interest is threatened by the truth.”

Life Before DFA

Prior to his life in financial services, Wheeler served as an officer in the U.S. Marines, having volunteered during the height of the Vietnam War. In his blog and in various public interviews, Wheeler said he found the rigidity of the military to be a significant personal challenge, and he also spoke frankly about the horrors of war.

After leaving the military following the birth of his daughter, Wheeler worked as a corporate controller in London. He also engaged in significant philanthropy projects in Central America and Africa.

One particularly notable period during his life before DFA came during his early 30s, when Wheeler worked in Saudi Arabia for Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman and arms dealer known for his lavish business deals and lifestyle. Khashoggi was one of the richest men in the world at that time, having amassed more than $4 billion by the early 1980s.

As Wheeler wrote in his blog in 2016, the late ’70s was an “exciting time to be there,” as the Saudis used their rapidly expanding oil wealth to modernize their country and turned to the West to aid in this project.

Before his arrival at Dimensional, Wheeler worked at Arthur Andersen & Co., and was the controller of Triad International Marketing, a London-based consulting firm. In the late 1980s, after working as a brokerage professional for Merrill Lynch, he made the rare move of spinning out his practice and founded a fee-only advisory firm.

Accomplishments at DFA

In a new post on DFA’s website, Dave Butler, co-chief executive officer, picks up the story of how Wheeler ended up at DFA.

“Dan was the best of the best,” Butler says. “He was passionate about doing the right thing. He always looked out for the best interests of others, and he approached every day with a smile.

“Dan was sure that a model built around the best interest of the client would win,” Butler recalls. “That was my ‘aha’ moment, and I know of so many others through the years who have said the same about Dan.”

Butler says that Wheeler holds many distinctions, but among them is being the first financial advisor to work with Dimensional. He shifted from being an advisor to joining Dimensional in 1989, starting the firm’s financial advisor business.

“It was in this role that Dan made his biggest impact,” Butler says. “He launched a movement that revolutionized financial advice. Dan was convinced that there were other financial advisors who would share his enthusiasm for marrying independent and conflict-free financial advice with cost-effective investment strategies grounded in a scientific approach. He just didn’t know who they were, and they didn’t know about Dimensional. With a larger-than-life personality and enough zeal to overcome the odds, he made this vision a reality.”

A Lasting Impact

Friends and colleagues echoed Butler’s sentiment across social media this week.

Samuel Adams, CEO and co-founder of Vert Asset Management, where Wheeler served as a board member until his death, says Wheeler was one of the rare people who managed to drive real, tangible change in the financial services industry.

“Millions of investors now enjoy fee-based advice and low-cost funds because of his work,” Adams says. “Dan changed every room he entered. You could feel his positive energy and his unstoppable optimism.”

Adam Birenbaum, the CEO of Buckingham Wealth Partners, says Wheeler’s effect on the industry and the lives of advisors and clients “cannot be overstated.”

“He is a legend in our space and he will be missed,” Birenbaum says. “His legacy is large.”

One Mentee’s Remembrance

In response to a request from ThinkAdvisor, Bryce Skaff, co-head of Dimensional’s global client group, jumped on the phone to offer his thoughts about Wheeler’s legacy. Skaff said Wheeler was an important mentor and someone who did not often lose sight of the bigger picture.

“Dan was one of the unsung heroes of our time in our business, and well beyond our business,” Skaff said. “I first met him 25 years ago when I was a young professional at Dimensional. What I learned over the years was that Dan was always a vicious defender of investors and a fierce advocate of great advisors.”

According to Skaff, Wheeler could be brutally honest – “refreshingly so” — especially when it came to his vision of what it meant to serve clients in a best-interest capacity.

“The conviction and the passion was unique, and it wasn’t just about chasing the best returns,” Skaff said. “Dan always spoke about how important it was to deliver a better experience and a better approach for clients.”

Skaff said Wheeler was a unique and at-times indelible character, and he had a talent for attracting that same type of person. In Skaff’s view, this ability to pull people together is one of the powerful forces that has made DFA what it is today.

“On one hand, he was a conservatively oriented CPA planning professional, and on the other hand, he was a vibrant storyteller with a huge passion for speaking about how we could change the advisor ecosystem for the better,” Skaff said. “The dynamism attracted people.”

Skaff said he will remember Wheeler most as someone who pushed for the best in himself and as someone who wanted others to find success, too.

“Dan was an important mentor early in my career, and he was the person that really embraced and trusted me in the early days,” Skaff said. “His example shows that the financial industry is not just data and numbers and science. The reality is that this is a business built on trust. Nobody can prove to anyone what is going to happen in the markets in the future. What we can do is build trust and collaborate and work together to try and achieve shared goals.”

(Pictured: Dan Wheeler)

John Manganaro

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