Delaware Investments has tweaked the compensation program for its sales force. The new plan took effect April 1, coinciding with the start of a fresh fiscal year for the Macquarie Group, the Australian firm that bought Delaware from Lincoln Financial in a deal that closed in January.

Jeff Klepacki Delaware Investments Head of Third-Party Broker-Dealer Distribution

The change in the comp plan comes three months after Delaware hired Jeff Klepacki, a veteran of Allianz Global Investors, to lead third-party distribution.

"Jeff's overarching goal is to have alignment among key account activites, wholesaling activities and where the opportunities lie so everything has to be aligned, and that includes compensation," Delaware spokeswoman Marlene Petter said in e-mailed comments to The MFWire.

Klepacki's team consists of three divisional sales managers, 28 external wholealers, 15 internals and three key accounts personnel. Before Macquarie acquired Delaware, Delaware's sales force was housed within Lincoln Financial Distributors.

One of the things Klepacki embarked on was a focused-firm approach. Previously, wholesalers covered too many firms, he noted.

"I don't want to discourage relationships, but we can't boil the ocean," said Klepacki, a three-time Olympic rower, in an interview with The MFWire on Thursday. "We have to choose where we allocate limited resources."

Delaware has 15 broker-dealers on its focus list, with the largest relationships being Merrill Lynch, UBS, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Raymond James, Lincoln Financial Advisors and LPL.

In dealing with the b-ds, Delaware has created a macro theme -- phase two of the economic recovery -- and supports it with such micro themes as income, rising inflation and rising interest rates. Delaware is tying those themes with the b-ds' research and provides support with multiple product solutions.

"We created the themes, a focused-firm approach and modified the compensation plan to support that approach," Klepacki said. 

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