Financial advice and asset allocation

Date
2013-02-07
Authors
Zhang, A
Supervisor
Item type
Conference Contribution
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The New Zealand Finance Colloquium
Abstract

We explore differences in portfolio composition between investors who receive financial advice and those who do not. Using proprietary data from a national investment savings scheme that contains information of 405,107 individual retirement accounts, we find that financial advice is transformative. People who receive advice hold their assets differently compared to people who do not. We report five key findings. (1) Older, wealthier and female investors are more likely to receive financial advice. (2) Advised investors hold more equity assets. (3) Demographic characteristics affect asset allocation. (4) Advisers tend to recommend asset allocations in line with life-cycle based theories. (5) Investors who received advice tend to earn higher returns in years when equity markets perform well.

Description
Keywords
Financial advice , Portfolio choice , Household finance
Source
New Zealand Finance Colloquium held at University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2013-02-07 to 2013-02-08, published in: Financial Advice and Asset Allocation
DOI
Rights statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).