Dunham & Associates was named a finalist in three categories at the 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards: Chief Marketing Officer of the Year (Salvatore M. Capizzi), Thought Leader of the Year (Adem Tumerkan), and Estate Planning – Advisor Service and Support (Dunham Trust). The Wealthies received a record 1,392 nominations from more than 500 companies, with only a third earning finalist status . Winners will be announced September 10, 2026, at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City .
The 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards - widely known as the Wealthies - received a record ~1,400 nominations from more than 500 companies. Only a third of those submissions earned finalist status. And Dunham got three:
Chief Marketing Officer of the Year - Salvatore M. Capizzi
Thought Leader of the Year - Adem Tumerkan, Content Editor
Estate Planning: Advisor Service and Support - Dunham Trust
Winners will be announced at a black-tie gala at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City on September 10, 2026.
How We Got Here
In 2025, Dunham relaunched with a new brand identity and a rebuilt website - a big move to match the firm's growing capabilities with a sharper public presence. The goal was to give advisors a better front door and the firm's thought leadership the platform it deserved.
That thought leadership found its footing fast.
In December 2025, Adem Tumerkan - Dunham's content editor and the voice behind the Morning Pour - won a ThinkAdvisor 2025 Luminaries Award for Next Gen Rising Star. New financial advisors engaging with the Morning Pour are onboarding into the Dunham ecosystem at a growing pace - one of the clearest signals that advisors like what Dunham says.
Asset Manager of the Year (The Prudential Advisors Award) — Asset Management
Compliance Team of the Year — Back Office Support, RIA or Broker-Dealer
Wholesaler of the Year — Robert Pancrazi, Northeast Regional Director, Individual Achievement
Winners are announced on June 25.
All of this is happening as Dunham's AUM/AUA has exceeded $8 billion as of June 8th - after hitting the $7 billion mark just five months ago.
Salvatore M. Capizzi, CEPA, CBDA: Back-to-Back on the Wealthies Stage
Sal was a Wealthies finalist last year - recognized for thought leadership work centered on his retirement white paper, "Is Our Industry Prepared for Retirees' Living Longer?" Now he's back as a CMO of the Year finalist alongside nominees from Future Standard, NEOS Investments, and WisdomTree.
The back-to-back nomination reflects what's happened to Dunham's marketing engine under his leadership. The Morning Pour, the Tuesday Blog, the advisor education platform, the rebrand, the rebuilt website - all of it came together under Sal's direction. The result is a marketing operation that gets cited by major publications, drives daily readership, and brings new advisors to Dunham.
Sal builds marketing solutions that give advisors genuinely differentiated ideas — the kind that change how clients see them, not just what they say. His writing draws on history, markets, and human behavior to frame strategies advisors can actually use (for example, read his piece on Cornelius Vanderbilt here).
Back-to-back recognition in a competition this size is an achievement in itself.
Adem Tumerkan: From Next Gen Rising Star to Thought Leader of the Year Finalist
In December 2025, Adem was recognized as an emerging voice shaping the industry when he won the ThinkAdvisor 2025 Luminaries Award for Next Gen Rising Star.
This year, he's a Wealthies finalist for Thought Leader of the Year - competing alongside nominees from BondBloxx, Kestra Investment Management, NEOS Investments, Research Affiliates, Tortoise Capital, and V-Square Quantitative Management.
This is meaningful recognition from two major industry awards.
The Thought Leader of the Year honors an individual whose ideas, writing, research, and contributions have advanced the financial services profession and helped shape the way professionals think and serve their clients.
Adem's body of work is consistent, analytical, and honest about what he sees behind the headlines.
For advisors, his work is what you read before the mainstream catches up - unique macro ideas, clearly framed, ready to share with clients before the talking heads get there. That's the edge thought leadership is supposed to deliver.
Dunham Trust: The Estate Planning Conversation Advisors Can't Avoid
The third nomination is for Dunham Trust, a part of Dunham that fills an essential role for financial advisors, helping their clients navigate estates and taxes.
Dunham Trust is a finalist in Estate Planning - Advisor Service and Support, competing alongside AssetMark, Fiduciary Trust Company, Luminary, Members Trust Company, NetLaw, and Wealth.com.
Among the various training sessions for financial advisors, a major undertaking early in 2026 was a 10-week program called the Dunham Trust Master Class Series.
Through this training, Dunham Trust helps advisors bring complex estate and trust concepts to their clients in a manner that clients can understand. More importantly, the more the advisor understands these topics, the more value they bring to the client-advisor relationship.
Dunham's growth hasn't happened by accident. It's the result of work put in every single day - across performance, content, compliance, and advisor support.
Different channels. Different judges. Same direction.
Now that's a firm that's been building.
FAQ:
What are the Wealthies and why do they matter? The Wealth Management Industry Awards — the Wealthies — are an annual competition run by WealthManagement.com, now in their 12th year . In 2026, a record 1,392 nominations were submitted by more than 500 companies, with only a third reaching finalist status . For advisors evaluating TAMP partners, Wealthies recognition signals that a firm's leadership, content, and platform infrastructure are being measured against the best in the industry.
Why was Adem Tumerkan named a 2026 Thought Leader of the Year finalist? Adem Tumerkan won the ThinkAdvisor 2025 Luminaries Award for Next Gen Rising Star in December 2025 , then earned a Wealthies Thought Leader of the Year finalist nomination in 2026 . The category honors individuals whose ideas, writing, and research advance the profession and shape how advisors think and serve clients. Adem's Morning Pour delivers macro analysis before the mainstream catches up — unique ideas, clearly framed, and ready for advisors to share with clients.
What is the Dunham Trust Estate Planning Education Platform? Dunham Trust helps financial advisors bring complex estate and trust planning conversations to clients in language clients can actually understand. In early 2026, Dunham Trust launched the Master Class Series — a 10-week training program built specifically for financial advisors. The platform earned a 2026 Wealthies finalist nomination in Estate Planning – Advisor Service and Support alongside firms including AssetMark and Fiduciary Trust Company .
What other recognition has Dunham earned in 2026? In addition to three Wealthies finalist nominations, Dunham was named to USA Today's 2026 Best Financial Advisory Firms list , earned two LSEG Lipper Fund Awards for the second consecutive year , and received three InvestmentNews Excellence Award finalist nominations — Asset Manager of the Year, Compliance Team of the Year, and Wholesaler of the Year . Dunham's AUM/AUA has exceeded $8 billion as of June 2026.
Sources:
Wealth Management / Informa Connect — Finalists of the 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards [informaconnect.com]
This communication is general in nature and provided for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered or relied upon as legal, tax or investment advice or an investment recommendation, or as a substitute for legal or tax counsel. Any investment products or services named herein are for illustrative purposes only and should not be considered an offer to buy or sell, or an investment recommendation for, any specific security, strategy or investment product or service. Always consult a qualified professional or your own independent financial professional for personalized advice or investment recommendations tailored to your specific goals, individual situation, and risk tolerance. All examples are hypothetical and are for illustrative purposes only.
About The Wealth Management Industry Awards
Dunham & Associates Investment Counsel, Inc was nominated as a finalist for the Wealth Management Wealthies Awards for the period of January 2025 through June 2026 in the following categories: CMO of the Year, Thought Leader of the Year, and Advisor Service and Support, Estate Planning.
The annual Wealth Management Industry Awards celebrate the companies, individuals and organizations that demonstrate outstanding achievement in support of financial advisor success. In evaluating entries, multiple factors were taken into consideration, including both quantitative measures, such as specific feature set, usage, potential, scope, and scale along with qualitative measures such as innovation, creativity, new methods of deployment, etc.
CMO of the Year criteria include demonstrable impact on their firm, the industry, and wealth management in general; external benchmarks such as new product roll outs, marketing campaigns, business growth, thought leadership content development, industry activism, leadership development; as well as industry respect, notoriety and promoting diversity
Thought Leader of the Year criteria include both quantitate measures such as program content, features, usage, potential to innovative investment management approaches, as well as the scope, scale, and reach, along with qualitative measures such as creativity, new investment standards, etc.
Advisor Service and Support, Estate Planning criteria include quantitative measures such as scope, scale, usage, adoption, advisor survey scores, etc. along with qualitative measures such as innovation, creativity, new methods of deployment
Compensation was not received from anyone in exchange for this nomination.
For more information on The Wealth Management Industry Awards, please visit https://informaconnect.com/wealth-management-industry-awards/
About the ThinkAdvisor Luminaries Award
Adem Tumerkan was awarded the 2025 Next-Gen Rising Star Award.
The ThinkAdvisor Luminaries award honors firms and individuals that demonstrate exemplary leadership, groundbreaking innovation and outstanding community impact.
The Next-Gen Rising Star award Honors individuals with less than 10 years of industry experience and who can demonstrate contributions to newsworthy and outstanding results – including how they helped introduce highly innovative programs/thinking, products and/or services that may be leading to or showing high potential for growth in revenues, advisor headcount, assets under management/advisement and/or other measures.
Compensation was not exchanged for this award. A fee was paid solely to promote the award nomination.
For more information on the Luminaries Award, please visit https://event.thinkadvisor.com/luminaries-awards/criteria.
About LSEG Lipper Fund Award
For more than 30 years and in over 17 countries worldwide, these highly-respected awards have honored funds and fund management firms that have excelled in providing consistently strong risk-adjusted performance relative to their peers.
Fund Classification Awards
The currency for the calculation corresponds to the currency of the country for which the awards are calculated and relies on monthly data. Classification averages are calculated with all eligible share classes for each eligible classification. The calculation periods extend over 36, 60, and 120 months. The highest Lipper Leader for Consistent Return (Effective Return) value within each eligible classification determines the fund classification winner over three, five, or 10 years. For a detailed explanation, please review the Lipper Leader Methodology Document at https://www.lipperfundawards.com/Methodology
The LSEG Lipper Fund Awards, granted annually, highlight funds and fund companies that have excelled in delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted performance relative to their peers. The LSEG Lipper Fund Awards are based on the Lipper Leader for Consistent Return rating, which is a risk-adjusted performance measure calculated over 36, 60 and 120 months. The fund with the highest Lipper Leader for Consistent Return (Effective Return) value in each eligible classification wins the LSEG Lipper Fund Award. For more information, see www.lipperfundawards.com. Although LSEG makes reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data contained herein, the accuracy is not guaranteed by LSEG Lipper.
About InvestmentNews
Award Methodology Nominated “InvestmentNews Excellence Awards” for the categories: Asset Manager of the Year, Compliance Team of the Year and Wholesaler of the Year by InvestmentNews in 2026. Based on data from December 2025 – February 2026.
Final winners will be announced in June 2026 and are selected through a five-stage process: open nominations; internal research by InvestmentNews; submission of detailed materials by selected excellence awardees; review by an independent panel of industry leaders using defined criteria; and final selection via a panel assessment panel and voting for winners in each category according to the relevant category criteria. No fee is required to enter. Recognition is not indicative of future performance and does not guarantee client satisfaction or success. Awards are based on information submitted by the adviser and should not be construed as an endorsement by, nor representative of, any client’s experience. Dunham has not provided compensation (directly or indirectly) to obtain, use, or distribute this third-party award nomination. Dunham and its affiliates are not affiliated with InvestmentNews or any of their affiliates.
Dunham & Associates Investment Counsel, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser and Broker/Dealer. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services and securities offered through Dunham & Associates Investment Counsel, Inc. Trust services offered through Dunham Trust Company, an affiliated Nevada Trust Company.
