Securities America Offering Behavioral Finance Workshops

The live workshops will explore finances, neuroscience, and psychology to explore why some people make detrimental financial decisions based on emotion.

Securities America has added behavioral finance to its professional development opportunities in order to help advisers steer clients away from making costly decisions based on emotions. The firm will approach behavioral finance as an interdisciplinary school of thought linking investing, neuroscience and psychology to help advisers better understand why investors sometimes make costly, irrational decisions with their finances.

Upcoming Securities America behavioral finance workshops will be held April 26-27 and June 5 in Minneapolis, Minn.; and May 22-23 and June 15 in Dallas, Texas. To receive the behavioral finance designation, attendees will need to attend all three days of each workshop and pass an online test.

Kirk Hulett, executive vice president of strategy and practice management, said Securities America offers live workshops rather than online courses because it gives advisers the opportunity to learn from each other and share their experiences.

“Securities America is going all-in on behavioral financial advice,” says Hulett. “We strongly believe behavioral advice paired with expert financial planning and investment management is the model for the practice of the future. Because the course is about recognizing, understanding and responding to emotions and behavior, we knew the best setting was where advisers could practice the techniques in-person with other professionals before working with clients.”

Lance Harshbarger, CFP, adds: “What’s important to the success or failure of any individual family is not whether they owned mutual fund A over mutual fund B. It’s their behavior as an investor that’s ultimately going to determine whether or not they make it to the destination they have in mind with their retirement plan.”

With cooperation from think2perform, Securities America’s first Behavioral Finance workshops were held in November and December 2016. It hopes to certify 100 advisers in 2017.

Securities America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services.

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