Ep 6: Advisers and investor behaviour

Daniel Egan is Vice-President of Behavioural Finance and Investing at Betterment, the New York City-based automated investment service, or robo-adviser.

Although new robo-advisers are launching all around the world, almost without exception they’e struggling to make anything more than modest profits. That notwithstanding, I do believe that automated and partially automated investing are the future; and also that robo-advisers can happily coexist alongside traditional face-to-face advisory firms. More than that, I think that human advisers and robos can learn from each other.

What I was most keen to ask Daniel Egan about is the research that Betterment has done on how to curb destructive investor behaviour, and what the lessons of it are for traditional advisory firms.