Now, anyone who’s seen my blog The Evidence-Based Investor will know that I’m not a big fan of actively managed mutual funds.

In principle, active management sounds fair enough. But in practice, only a tiny number of funds outperform over the long term, and they’re almost impossible to spot in advance.

Consequently, most investors in active funds end up worse off than if they’d simply invested in low-cost index funds.

The problem is that most financial advisers in the UK still recommend active funds.

So, given all the evidence that most investors shouldn’t be using them, will we start seeing investors suing their advisers for compensation?

Joining me via Skype is Phil Miller from a firm called Pension Focus, which represents clients who feel they've been badly advised.

The special guest on our final podcast of 2016 is Daniel Egan, 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.

I hope you’ll find this podcast as interesting to listen to as it was for me to produce, and if you do, please leave a review and share it.

Over the years I’ve found that some of the stanchest and most effective advocates of evidence-based investing are those who’ve actually worked in the active fund management industry and seen its shortcomings at first hand.

Lars Kroijer is one example, and another is Preston McSwain. Preston hails from Birmingham, Alabama, and worked for more than 20 years selling and marketing complex investment products for a range of firms including Lehman Brothers.

But Lehman’s collapse and the ensuing global market meltdown prompted a complete rethink about investing and how best to serve consumers. He now runs Fiduciary Wealth Partners in Boston, managing the wealth of high-net worth individuals, and primarily using Vanguard index funds.

The latest episode of the TEBI podcast tells his remarkable story.

If you haven’t been following our new podcast series, what have you been doing? Seriously, we’d love you to subscribe and to give us your feedback.

For this week’s show I review the inaugural Evidence-Based Investing Conference, held earlier this month in New York City. It’s a great listen, with contributions from three of the most prominent thought leaders on the US investing scene — Josh Brown, Barry Ritholtz and Morgan Housel.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the third episode of the Evidence-Based Investor podcast! After the release of the long-awaited FCA interim report into the UK asset management industry, Robin speaks to Andy Agathangelou from the Transparency Task Force about his involvement in putting the case for clearer charges and a better deal for consumers.

This episode is brought to you by Regis Media.

For more insight and comment on evidence-based investing, visit evidenceinvestor.co.uk.

Welcome to episode 2 of the Evidence-Based Investor podcast! In the build up to the inaugural Evidence-Based Investing conference in New York, Robin speaks to Wendy Cook about how the term "evidence-based" investing was coined, the challenges of writing about investing, and how the rest of the world is moving away from active management to low-cost indexing.

This episode is brought to you by Regis Media.

For more insight and comment on evidence-based investing, visit evidenceinvestor.co.uk.

Welcome to the first episode of the Evidence-Based Investor podcast! In this show, Robin Powell speaks to Craig Lazzara and Tim Edwards from S&P Dow Jones Indices about the latest results from SPIVA 2016. The conversation ranges from active funds in America to the impact of Brexit in Europe and the UK.

This episode is brought to you by Regis Media.

For more insight and comment on evidence-based investing, visit evidenceinvestor.co.uk.