Advisors now use proprietary behavioural finance technology to help clients make better decisions

TORONTO, April 18, 2017 – When making decisions, personal bias and emotion can often override logic. Financial decision-making is no exception. That's why today TD Wealth Private Wealth Management announced a proprietary technology that uses the principles of behavioural finance to enable advisors to better understand a client's financial blind spots and guide them to make more informed financial decisions.

“Everyone has blind spots when it comes to financial planning and investing, which can unknowingly hinder logic or rational judgment,” says Dave Kelly, Senior Vice President, Private Wealth Management, TD Wealth. “Our unique and exclusive discovery experience uses research and insights from the field of behavioural finance to help our advisors co-discover what truly matters to their clients."

Identified as the next paradigm shift in financial advice, behavioural finance is an area of study that looks at how personality influences financial decisions. More specifically, it explores why people sometimes make biased, unpredictable or irrational financial choices.

About Behavioural Finance

Behavioural finance is a pillar of behavioural economics, a broader field of study that explores the effects of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on economic decisions. The science behind behavioral economics, and more specifically, behavioural finance, goes well beyond academic theory with many real world examples. An individual's personality and past experiences play an influential role when it comes to future decision making and actions regarding finances.

The TD Discovery Tool

The new TD Discovery Tool will allow TD Wealth advisors to use the Five Factor Model of Personality¹ to create a "Wealth Personality Report" for high-net-worth clients. As a leading paradigm of personality research, refined over decades by academics, the Five Factor Model identifies personality traits that can affect individual behaviour. The offering will be used to augment the current Wealth process and is optional for clients to participate.

Including the Five Factor Model in the new TD Discovery Tool will allow TD Wealth advisors to identify and assess clients' financial blind spots, based on personality traits and individual experiences. For clients, this means a more meaningful and personalized financial conversation and ongoing relationship with their advisor.

“With a deeper focus on discovery, our advisors can better identify and understand a client’s financial personality,” says Kelly. “The better we understand a client's decision-making rationale, the better advice we can give to help them meet their financial goals.”

For more information on behavioural finance or the new TD Wealth Discovery Tool, please visit td.com/redefiningwealth.

About TD Bank Group

The Toronto-Dominion Bank and its subsidiaries are collectively known as TD Bank Group ("TD" or the "Bank"). TD is the sixth largest bank in North America by branches and serves approximately 25 million customers in three key businesses operating in a number of locations in financial centres around the globe: Canadian Retail, including TD Canada Trust, TD Auto Finance Canada, TD Wealth (Canada), TD Direct Investing, and TD Insurance; U.S. Retail, including TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank®, TD Auto Finance U.S., TD Wealth (U.S.), and an investment in TD Ameritrade; and Wholesale Banking, including TD Securities. TD also ranks among the world's leading online financial services firms, with approximately 10.8 million active online and mobile customers. TD had CDN$1.2 trillion in assets on January 31, 2017. The Toronto-Dominion Bank trades under the symbol "TD" on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges.

¹https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1635039

SOURCE TD Bank Group