Behavioural Finance Seminar: Biases, Frames and Better Advice

Due to demand, this session has been widened to include an insurance perspective alongside behavioural finance in financial planning. 

This session explores how behavioural finance can transform real‑world financial planning, drawing on insights from both academic research and front‑line practitioner experience. This includes familiar challenges for local advisers and brokers, such as navigating conversations about rising premiums, helping clients understand the trade off between higher excesses and lower monthly costs, and addressing risk misconceptions. Attendees will gain a practical understanding of some of the key behavioural factors influencing client decisions including reference dependence, framing, loss aversion and mental accounting

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify key behavioural concepts such as framing, reference points and loss aversion, and recognise how these can influence client decision‑making across both investment and insurance contexts.
• Explain how behavioural preferences can shape client attitudes toward investment options and insurance products, including reactions to premium movements, excess structures and perceived value. 
• Apply selected behavioural techniques to structure clearer, more effective client conversations.

Speaker Bio: 

Dr Alan Whittle is a Chartered Financial Planner and Fellow of the Personal Finance Society whose work sits at the intersection of behavioural finance and real‑world professional practice. His 2025 PhD thesis examined how reference points and framing influence investment choices in advised impact investing. Through Unburdened Solutions, founded in 2019, Alan helps financial planning and insurance teams design clearer recommendations, nudge better client decisions and embed ethical judgement in their day‑to‑day work. Alongside his consultancy work, he is a university lecturer and tutor as well as a professional trainer. In his training he blends an academic understanding of behavioural science and ethics with practical experience to help bring these subjects to life.