As part of its mission to enhance the skills of financial professionals, the Investments and Wealth Institute presented its second annual Behavioral Finance Week. Taking place September 7-13, 2020, the week aimed to bring attention to behavioral finance, a field that examines the role of psychological biases in financial behavior and markets.
The week’s proceedings included the Behavioral Finance Forum. The organization’s first online-only conference, the one-day event consisted of programming designed to help financial professionals develop an understanding of current topics in behavioral finance. Along with enjoying access to experts in the field, such as faculty members from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, attendees had the opportunity to take part in networking and social activities.
Behavioral Finance Week also saw the Investments and Wealth Institute reveal the results of the BeFi Barometer 2020, a survey it commissioned alongside Charles Schwab Investment Management (CSIM) and Cerulli Associates. The highlights of the survey include the finding that 81 percent of financial professionals applied behavioral finance strategies with their clients in 2020, a jump of 10 percent year over year. As noted by Omar Aguilar, a chief investment officer at CSIM, behavioral finance is a particularly important tool in navigating clients through the unprecedented market conditions of today’s world.
