Dynamic Planner is set to launch the industry’s first psychometric Sustainable Investing questionnaire. Launching on 7 May to all advice firms and clients using Dynamic Planner, the questionnaire provides a simple, yet ‘academically robust’ solution to the challenges advisers face when talking to their clients about environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and sustainability.
The development of the questionnaire has been led by Louis Williams PhD FHEA, Dynamic Planner’s Head of Psychology and Behavioural Insights. It has been designed in consultation with focus groups of advisers and tested by 1000 investors. Its key aim is to provide advisers with a robust and repeatable process to hold sustainability discussions with clients, by accurately capturing an individual’s ESG preferences.
Williams says: “Sustainable investing is not a straightforward tick box exercise. Preferences can be complex, encompassing an incredibly broad range of factors. Expectations of the impact it can have can be misjudged, along with the importance and balance clients place on potential returns and their sustainability preferences. The key to fully understanding the ESG and sustainability hopes and expectations of a client is real engagement, so that their preferences can be accurately captured and the implications of their choices discussed.
“Until now, emphasis has been placed on understanding the impact companies have concerning ESG but few advances have been made to create a process which truly helps clients to understand the whole picture. Bringing together psychology and statistics in the form of our Sustainable Investing questionnaire enables us to help advisers cut through the noise and really understand how someone might feel and act both in the short and long-term. Successful investment and sustainability conversations pivot on a clear understanding of someone’s goals.”
The Sustainability Investing questionnaire will be used alongside Dynamic Planner’s Sustainable Investing insight, launched in February. It has been designed with the client in mind, to avoid jargon and complex terminology; no financial knowledge is needed to answer questions; it employs an appropriate number of questions in an appropriate order; all of this based on feedback and insight provided through testing and consultation with investors and advisers.
Ben Goss, CEO at Dynamic Planner, says: “Our psychometric Sustainable Investing questionnaire is an industry first, built on a combination of the robust academic thinking of schools of psychology and statistics. And importantly, in tandem with investors and advisers.
“Our team has the experience of successfully creating a risk profiling questionnaire that has supported more than one million clients of advice firms since 2013. What we are launching now is built on a similar formula, to capture a client’s sustainable investing preferences – an extension of our suitability process with the extra ‘s’ of sustainability.
“Combined with our Sustainable Investing insight launched earlier this year, we will be able to help advice firms deliver more deeply valuable and bespoke financial plans in line with clients ESG preferences.”
