Delegates determined their key takeouts from the day's program, and actions to take to further improve the way they relate with individual investors - and/or help others who must do so.

The conventional tactics of asking questions to gain trust during client meetings are based on faulty and outdated assumptions. Five conversational recipes are needed to achieve a trust trifecta.

Use clients' choices to recover both their true preferences and their financial sophistication and the impact of complexity on client decision-making.

State Street's 2015 Retirement Survey interviewed 1200 Australians, to understand the psychology of Australian retirees and the opportunity to engage and boost confidence.

It's a sad fact that not everyone adjusts well to retirement. It's estimated that about one third of retirees have problems adapting after leaving full time work. So why do some people fail to adapt? A Dynamic Resource Model provides a potential solution.

Research in finology, neurology and psychology consistently reveal that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities. Merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn’t fix the problem. The real question is ‘how can we do better?’

In our society, it’s critical that every individual has a clear perspective about money, and the role that it plays in their present and future well-being. But money means different things to different people.

Investors must make choices in an increasingly complex environment - and that complexity has substantial and varied effects on the decision to opt out of a portfolio choice.

Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities: Merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn’t fix the problem. The real question is: How can we do better?

Trust is weighted differently when selling intangibles like financial advice, because there is no real product to demonstrate, nothing for your buyer to grasp. There is no physical product to be trusted. So what can be done to create trust?

Risk tolerance is a key constraint in designing a portfolio, but it should also be considered a key constraint in establishing their goals for investing in the first place.

We examine four situations where individuals make poor choices and review the research to show where the brain makes those decisions. In each case, we present some ideas about how to overcome the potentially suboptimal choice when it comes to investing.

According to Dr David Lazenby, finology provides a framework for re-envisioning advice from the customer experience perspective - because the traditional advice process can be extremely daunting for clients, and may leave them feeling quite vulnerable.

Focusing on a client's investment portfolio alone ignores their greatest asset - their ability to continue earning income through the fruits of their labor, also known as their "human capital". Deciding how much risk to take with financial capital given a client's human capital risks is crucial.

Our eclectic Panel - a politician, a pastor, a professor, a portfolio manager, a practitioner, a provocateur, and a 'preneur, moderated by our Publisher - addresses Conference 2015 delegates' questions about key Crossroads, Dilemmas and Decisions.

Cognitive functioning declines as we age, affecting financial decision making. Practitioners need an increased awareness about issues relating to aging and cognitive decline.

Changing client behaviour was an essential part of a financial planner's skills, yet that part of the job had not been approached with the same level of scientific rigour as a planner's technical skills.

It's a paradox in financial planning that the so-called "hard" skills are actually the easiest to master, while the so-called "soft" skills are often the hardest.

While 36% of investors say they are ‘reviewing their need for downside protection’, only 8% are currently implementing it. Yet there are many strategies to manage risk in portfolios.

By understanding our own Time Perspective and learning to recognise different Time Perspectives in others, we can better understand and influence retirement planning behaviour.