Introduction to Goal-Based Financial Planning

The traditional approach to investment focuses on outperforming a benchmark or maximising returns for a given level of risk, or minimising risk for a given level of return. Under this paradigm, investors are assumed to have no emotional biases and only care about optimising their satisfaction. Clients, however, have specific real-life goals which are not solely tied to financial markets. Although emotions are often viewed as anathema to sound financial decisions, there is a huge emotional element to holistically defining financial goals. A goals-based financial planning approach takes into consideration the fact that investors have different goals which vary in terms of how critical they are to the client.

This module presents an overview of goals-based investing and aims at providing learners with the necessary introductory background to adopting a goals-based approach to financial planning.