Episode 53: The Real Value of Financial Advice: An Empirical Perspective

Live in the studio with us today is Preet Banerjee, renowned speaker, personal finance expert, consultant and author of Stop Overthinking Your Money. He is also the founder of MoneyGaps, a hybrid-advisor platform designed to help financial advisors make financial planning accessible to more Canadians. Having done a reality TV show and with a poplar YouTube channel, Preet is on the forefront of the finance world, and he is here to talk to us about the findings that his DBA research have produced. He discusses his endeavour of seeking empirical evidence for the actual contribution that advisors are making to the financial lives of people, and we talk about the crucial difference between robo and human advisors and how people’s diverse needs demand diverse solutions. This is a really insightful conversation with someone who knows what he’s talking about, so be sure to listen in on this one!

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Key Points From This Episode:

• What is the value of financial advice? Preet shares about his DBA research. [0:02:33.0]
• Preet’s history in finance and how he gained a more objective perspective. [0:05:13.0]
• Speculating around the findings and more about his research design. [0:06:41.0]
• The relationship between wealth and financial advice: correlation or causation? [0:11:11.0]
• Measuring the performance of someone who uses no advisor. [0:14:17.0]  
• How the financial security of the home you grew up in affects your finances. [0:16:26.0]
• Building the model to score financial wellbeing and the challenges that surfaced. [0:20:20.0]
• Paying more attention to aspects outside of portfolio management. [0:25:09.0]
• MoneyGaps as a platform for affordable financial planning. [0:29:04.0]
• How the value of human advisors depends on each individual consumer. [0:33:34.0] 
• The core benefits of human advisors. [0:34:44.0]
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“The more insecure the household was that you grew up in, the better decisions you made later on and presumably, that was based on talking to people saying that those things stick with you and you never want to replicate that.” — @preetbanerjee [0:16:42]

“So far, it looks like they focus a lot on managing their portfolios but they don’t spend a lot of time on all the other stuff and that could be a real problem.” — @preetbanerjee [0:25:13]

“Financial advisors who think they’re in the portfolio management business anymore are wrong. They are in the people management business and the wealth management of those people because the portfolio stuff has been figured out.” — @preetbanerjee [0:36:09]

Links from Today’s Episode:

Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/

Preet Banerjee — http://www.preetbanerjee.com/

Preet Banerjee on Twitter — https://twitter.com/preetbanerjee

CBC News Network — https://www.cbc.ca/

Stop Overthinking Your Money on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Over-Thinking-Your-Money-Financial/dp/0143183516

University of Toronto — https://www.utoronto.ca/

MoneyGaps — https://moneygaps.com/

LegalWills — https://www.legalwills.ca/

Willful — https://willful.co/

The Blunt Bean Counter — http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/

Download the transcript of this episode here: Rational Reminder Podcast – EP.53 – Transcript