Neil Bage: The investment cost of being human

Difference between perception and reality

clock • 4 min read

How clients think they will behave and actual human behaviour are two very different things, writes Neil Bage. Here he explores the 'behaviour gap' and why risk profiling needs to dig deeper

You may have heard of the phrase "behaviour gap", attributed to financial adviser and author Carl Richards. Those two words describe "the difference between the higher returns that investors might potentially earn and the lower returns they actually do earn because of their own behaviour". Over the years, behavioural researchers have shown there to be several of these behaviour gaps. Importantly, they extend way beyond the world of investing, existing in all money domains. Essentially, a behaviour gap is the difference between perception and reality; the difference between what we ...

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