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Understanding emotions that drive decisions can help firms boost returns

Wealth managers need to focus on behavioural alpha to help clients avoid the losses they make from “poor and emotionally driven financial decisions”, according to Oxford Risk.

The firm said in its whitepaper ‘Behavioural Engagement Technology: Using technology to understand, map, and improve engagement in personal finance‘, that understanding and guiding the emotions that drive investing decisions can help wealth managers boost returns for clients, but the industry needs technology to deliver at scale.

Clients on average lose 3% per year from a combination of holding too much cash and making mistakes with their invested assets, Oxford Risk has found.

Errors include focusing on familiarity and domestic assets from well-known companies, chasing current and popular themes, following star fund managers, focusing on past performance, trading too much, not rebalancing enough to effectively diversify, and focusing on income or yield over total returns.

Head of behavioural finance Dr Greg B Davies said: “Unlike traditional alpha, behavioural alpha is available to everyone and doesn’t require beating the market, but just engaging with it better and overcoming some of the emotional and behavioural barriers investors have when it comes to managing their portfolios.

“Clients are human and often make expensive mistakes, such as leaving too much cash uninvested, and behaving badly with what they do have invested.

“These mistakes tend to be emotionally comfortable for investors in the moment. People sit on cash because it feels secure at the time. They take more risk when times are good, and reduce risk when markets drop, buying high and selling low, and systematically underperforming buy and hold returns.”

Source: Professional Adviser