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.

A recent survey of 1000 Australian investors found that individuals who are advised have greater confidence in their retirement readiness and a heightened awareness of the retirement strategies and solutions available.

The danger that “sequence of return risk” can devastate a retirement portfolio is both increasingly recognised and frequently misunderstood. Three concrete, research-driven strategies can help manage it.

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.

Portfolio construction specialists face a new set of challenges. What matters is the ability to deliver a robust and predictable outcome. This requires institutional capabilities.

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.

Going forward, there are headwinds for equity and fixed income markets, however the outlook for alpha generation from many alternative strategies remains robust. Now is an attractive point in the cycle to add, or increase exposure to alternative strategies.

High active share is often profiled as “better” but it creates a dilemma – portfolios can exhibit risk concentrations which may lead to volatile return streams for investors. Low active share funds should not be excluded from asset allocators’ tool kit.

The smooth sailing of Australian equities over the last few years has developed complacency among investors. But rougher seas ahead will require a more active approach. It’s time to ensure that you engage a truly active manager.

A better way to evaluate companies and portfolios is to consider where companies do business, not where they are headquartered. It is time to invest beyond borders.

By avoiding unrewarded risk and by avoiding going against other factors, the risk return profile of factor investing portfolios can be improved further.

At the heart of defensive investing lies infrastructure assets - but only only in its purest form is infrastructure able to deliver the defensive qualities that investors are targeting.

Investors face five dilemmas on which judgments need to be made with respect to: earnings, valuations, momentum, reinvestment and sentiment.

As volatility in bond markets becomes more pronounced, and asset bubbles develop, investors will need to reassess their approach to the asset class. Unconstrained bond investors can exploit opportunities across relative value, yield curve and fixed income volatility.

Our panel debated the views of the two presenters who addressed this "crossroad" - that boutique investment managers outperform and that smart beta is dumb.

Smart beta's popularity has swept not only the ETF world but academia too. Yet there is academic debate about whether smart beta produces alpha, risk-adjusted performance or only beta, a premium for bearing risk.

While the debate over the value of active management has intensified in recent years, the outperformance of boutique managers has been overlooked. Active boutique managers have consistently outperformed both non-boutique peers and indices over the past twenty years.

The reformist credibility of the Chinese government has been severely damaged by its market intervention, which could be very serious for the ongoing transformation of the world’s most populous nation.