Financial DNA - Discovering Your Unique Financial Personality for a Quality Life

When I was a financial planner and even before that a CPA, I had regularly observed that people's behavior and decision-making patterns changed when they were under pressure; the pressure often being caused by money and relationships. This observation was fundamental to my thinking when I was building the Financial DNA Discovery Process with my team. We wanted to know what a person's natural instinctive behaviors are as this would be key to predicting how they would really behave when there were difficult times and/or difficult decisions had to be made.

This plays into the research we recently did of 100 advisors with AUM over $50million. 70% of them said that they were surprised by their clients’ reactions. Why?

I have had some interesting discussions in the past week with financial advisors and managers of advisors. With the financial downturn everyone is evaluating where they are at. The big question being asked is: "Should you be in the business?"

My feeling is that over the next 1 to 3 years many current advisors will give up or be forced out. When you think there is research showing that 89% of clients are considering switching advisors there is much to think about. The financial services landscape is going to change dramatically.

I have had some interesting discussions in the past few weeks with business leaders from many different industries and backgrounds in the United States. One of the areas that consistently comes up is poor corporate governance. As mentioned in my last blog most of the economic problems we have right now are due to the behavior of our leaders.

Being direct, alot of leadership behavior is not properly monitored. So, a key step towards fixing the problems we have today would be to change the corporate governance structures in publicly traded companies.

At the moment there is alot of talk about the collapsing business and financial environment. For everyone it is having an impact in all sorts of ways. Of course, we all look at the numbers side of the equation; but what about the people side? What are the human risks in your business? How are your people behaving in these times? Then, also, how do you want them to behave to handle the crisis and then build your business going forward?

We have been working with many companies all over the globe on managing and developing their human capital. In this regard, we have been using our Business DNA Business Risks Matrix. Review a summary here: http://www.financialdnaresources.com/images/BusinessRisks.jpg

In the financial services industry there are a lot of supporters for the use of behavioral profiles as part of the client discovery process and there are some detractors from using them. Like in any situation where there are detractors most have not yet had a positive experience or seen the full benefits or simply have been listening to the wrong information. This is human nature.

Overall, I do believe that you can never have enough information about yourself, your clients and also your team. As Benjamin Disraeli said: "The most successful people are those who have the most information". Of course you also need to have the best and most accurate information.

A statement I have been making to many people for the last 10 years is: "Investment markets cannot be controlled, but how you manage your reaction to them can be".

Generally, for most investors the reason that they obtain returns which are on average 6% lower than market returns is because of their behavior. Investors generally make poor investment decisions because of their reactions to events and also to their own life circumstances. This can be because they do not know who they are or how to manage their emotional impulses which are driven from how they are wired to behave. I really want to emphasize that successful investing is about managing your behavior.

Hang on. Where is the market going to? Will the Dow be 5000 in the next few months by June 2009 or 22000 in 6 years? Who knows. They are interesting questions. I have placed my own personal wager on the markets reaching these levels in those time frames with some friends. I have often talked about this with friends and clients since 1999. Japan could still get messy for the world yet as it has many unresolved issues. These problems coming down the pipeline have been a big part of my move into the human behavior business.

However, this whole discussion does call into question what is our role in advising clients? Is our role to help them manage their behavior or to get the highest maximum performance?

Well the stock market has gone to 10 year lows. Has it hit the bottom? That is not necessarily the crucial issue although this downward spiral will be raising more fears. What is crucial is how you handle this situation in terms of your own behavior and managing that of your clients. If you read my last blog you will see research is showing that advisors are on the whole not going far enough in client discovery and in particular understanding behavior.

Here are some tips for managing your clients which are all based on having greater behavioral understanding...

With turbulent financial markets it is far more likely that your true financial behavior will emerge and strongly influence your financial decisions. The degree to which this true financial behavior emerges and your ability to effectively manage it will to a large degree depend on how much pressure you come under because of financial concerns and difficulties.

How are you going to navigate these difficult times? To what extent will your emotions drive decisions?

For a few years now there has been an increasing trend toward people taking steps to find greater meaning in their life. Gradually, more and more people are having the courage to do it and not just talk about it. This may involve turning their back on what is a well paid job and years of study and even moving from where they live. I even believe that this desire to find meaning will increase with turbulent financial times which could be quite dislocating for some. To survive emotionally and financially people will have to change their perspective on life and their relationship to money so that their meaning is not as much defined by how much they have.