New Vistas In Risk Profiling

Risk profiling is fraught with misunderstandings that lead to ill-advised approaches to determining suitable investment solutions for individuals. The author discusses how we should think about the crucial elements of (a) risk tolerance, (b) behavioural risk attitudes, and (c) risk capacity. He uses a simple thought experiment to examine a stripped-down investor situation and define the essential features and exact role of each of the components of an investor's overall risk profile. He examines options for eliciting and measuring risk tolerance and considers some promising avenues for future methods.

If risk aversion and willingness to take on risk are driven by emotions and we as humans are bad at correctly identifying them, the finance profession has a serious challenge at hand—how to reliably identify the individual risk profile of a retail investor or high-net-worth individual. In this series of CFA Institute Research Foundation briefs, we have asked academics and practitioners to summarize the current state of knowledge about risk profiling in different key areas.

Research Foundation Review 2019 presents the offerings from CFA Institute Research Foundation during 2019. We start with an overview, summarize the year's output, and end with other relevant material, such as awards and recognition.

The Research Foundation Review 2017 summarizes the offerings from the CFA Institute Research Foundation over the past year—books, literature reviews, workshop presentations, and other relevant material.

Governance is a word that is increasingly heard and read in modern times, be it corporate governance, global governance, or investment governance. Investment governance, the central concern of this modest volume, refers to the effective employment of resources—people, policies, processes, and systems—by an individual or governing body (the fiduciary or agent) seeking to fulfil their fiduciary duty to a principal (or beneficiary) in addressing an underlying investment challenge. Effective investment governance is an enabler of good stewardship, and for this reason it should, in our view, be of interest to all fiduciaries, no matter the size of the pool of assets or the nature of the beneficiaries. To emphasize the importance of effective investment governance and to demonstrate its flexibility across organization type, we consider our investment governance process within three contexts: defined contribution (DC) plans, defined benefit (DB) plans, and endowments and foundations (E&Fs). Since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the financial sector’s place in the economy and its methods and ethics have (rightly, in many cases) been under scrutiny. Coupled with this theme, the task of investment governance is of increasing importance due to the sheer weight of money, the retirement savings gap, demographic trends, regulation and activism, and rising standards of behavior based on higher expectations from those fiduciaries serve. These trends are at the same time related and self-reinforcing. Having explored the why of investment governance, we dedicate the remainder of the book to the question of how to bring it to bear as an essential component of good fiduciary practice. At this point, the reader might expect investment professionals to launch into a discussion about an investment process focused on the best way to capture returns. We resist this temptation. Instead, we contend that achieving outcomes on behalf of beneficiaries is as much about managing risks as it is about capturing returns—and we mean “risks” broadly construed, not just fluctuations in asset values.

Volume 2 of Portfolio Management for Financial Advisors is a visionary exploration into the evolving landscape of managing client portfolios in financial planning. Being more than a sequel, this book challenges the financial planning profession to aspire for profound impact. Beyond foundational concepts, the author blends professional experience with academic rigour to provide a unique lens on managing client portfolios. Among other topics, the book delves into practical tools for portfolio risk management, retirement portfolio management, and boldly asserts the profession's potential to address global challenges.

The first annual FRIBIS conference in October 2021 aimed to take into account the growing economic interest in financial issues in basic income research. After all, research on Unconditional Basic Income is significantly influenced by this development of monetary policy issues and, in turn, contributes just as influentially to the discussion. In addition to the economically focused main sessions, the two-day conference also included parallel sessions of other FRIBIS teams, in which prominent guests of the basic income discourse presented and discussed together with the interdisciplinary and international teams and members of FRIBIS. Bernhard Neumärker is Professor of Economic Policy and Director of the Götz Werner Professorship for Economic Policy and New Ordoliberalism at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. In 2019, he founded the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS) for interfaculty and interdisciplinary research on Unconditional Basic Income in a network of six institutes of the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg.

The current standard process of risk profiling through questionnaires is highly unreliable and typically explains less than 15% of the variation in risky assets between investors—mostly because the questionnaires focus on socio-economic variables and hypothetical scenarios. The existing research in risk profiling shows, however, that several factors can provide more accurate and reliable insights into the risk profile of investors. Among these factors are the lifetime experiences an investor has had, the financial decisions made in the past, and the influence of family and friends as well as advisers. By using these factors, practitioners can get a better understanding of their clients’ preferences in order to recommend suitable investment strategies and products.