Practical analysis for investment professionals
20 December 2012

Private Wealth: My Top Five Articles from 2012

Over the course of 2012, this blog covered a range of topics related to wealth management. Here are my top five picks from the year — not necessarily the posts that garnered the most attention, but those I thought raised interesting, or perhaps overlooked, aspects of private wealth and behavioral finance:

  • Wealthy private investors and their financial advisers can learn a lot from a largely unknown but gigantic Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. According to “Yale Versus Norway,” a white paper published by Greycourt, an independent investment adviser serving wealthy families and select institutions, there are characteristics of the Government Pension Fund Global, as the Norwegian fund is officially known, that make it “simpatico” with family investors.
  • Over the summer, many of us were glued to the news for updates on the Olympics Games in London. There were plenty of stories of triumph and disappointment, but the story that really fascinated me was not about a particular athlete, event, or remarkable feat. It was a blog post on the psychology on display at the medal ceremony and what it told us about counterfactual thinking. I wrote about this phenomenon in “Silver Medal or Bronze? Understanding Pride, Regret, and Counterfactual Thinking.”
  • We all know there is a link between wealth and luxury: After all, affluent investors tend to have a penchant for the finer things in life, including jewelry, antiques, art, yachts, and wine. And private banks and financial advisers are often called upon to help their clients acquire, finance, insure, and tax-efficiently bequeath the trappings of wealth. But are there any actual business lessons from the luxury sector? The short answer is yes. Here are the seven transferable lessons of luxury and what prestige brands can teach private wealth managers.
  • When was the last time you sat down with your clients and asked: “What are your health challenges?” If my hunch is right, the answer is probably “never,” unless there was an obvious visible sign of disability or illness. Here are five ways financial advisers can better serve clients with chronic illnesses.
  • We hear a lot these days about “holistic” wealth management — service that goes beyond traditional investment advice — and how advisers should handle the disparate needs of their clients as part of a seamless whole. One of these needs is trust and estate planning. In all cases, it’s an attorney who drafts the trust document, but that doesn’t mean wealth advisers don’t have a role to play. When a client sets up a charitable trust or a trust for his children and/or grandchildren, one of the biggest decisions he will wrestle with is who to appoint as trustee? It’s a tough choice, and the client may turn to his wealth adviser for guidance. When it comes to advising trustees, here are the five biggest pitfalls.

Thanks for reading. And happy 2013.

For more news and trends, visit the Private Wealth Management Community of Practice.


Please note that the content of this site should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute.

About the Author(s)
Lauren Foster

Lauren Foster was a content director on the professional learning team at CFA Institute and host of the Take 15 Podcast. She is the former managing editor of Enterprising Investor and co-lead of CFA Institute’s Women in Investment Management initiative. Lauren spent nearly a decade on staff at the Financial Times as a reporter and editor based in the New York bureau, followed by freelance writing for Barron’s and the FT. Lauren holds a BA in political science from the University of Cape Town, and an MS in journalism from Columbia University.

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