Accomplished author, educator;
Groundbreaking research on boomer retirement issues
Boston, MA (February 24, 2014) The Retirement Income Industry Association (RIIA) recently announced Helen K. Simon as the winner of its 2014 Practitioner Thought Leadership Award. Simon will be presented with the award at the RIIA Spring Conference March 17 and 18, 2014 in Chicago, IL.
The RIIA Spring Conference, which is once again hosted by Morningstar at their office in Chicago, brings home the theme: “Retirement Income Opportunities are the Beginnings of Great Enterprises” and offers great examples of RIIA’s mission of “discovering the new realities of retirement” across industry silos through the association’s sponsors, speakers, panelists and attendees.
Helen K. Simon, CFP®, RMA(sm) has been on the faculty of Florida International University (FIU) in Miami since 2003, and teaches classes in Investments and Risk Management. She established and funded the State Farm Financial Literacy Lab at FIU and the FIU Student Managed Investment, along with being the founding facility adviser to the FIU FPA Student Chapter. Helen holds an MBA and a DBA from Nova Southeastern University, has been a CFP® since 1994 and earned the RMA(sm) designation in 2013. Simon is also the CEO of Personal Business Management Services, LLC, a fee-only investment advisory firm in the State of Florida.
A Focus on Boomer Retirement Issues
She is actively involved in research in the areas of boomer retirement issues, market prediction models, behavioral finance and financial planning. She has presented and authored many papers at a variety of professional conferences as well as many well-respected publications across the financial services and business media.
Her winning paper, “Financial Behaviors of Clients in or Near Retirement: What Advisers Need to Know”, can be found in the Spring 2014 of the Retirement Management Journal (Vol. 4, No. 1) the first professional journal designed to promote research, scholarship and innovative thinking on retirement-management and retirement-income topics that contribute to the profession’s and industry’s body of knowledge. The issue will also be available for purchase on Amazon.com.
Simon’s paper seeks to pinpoint behavioral biases identified by the literature in the field of behavioral finance that are of particular concern to advisers who work with clients both close to and already in retirement. The literature suggests that hyper loss aversion and overconfidence are significant behavioral pitfalls, which may well be amplified by bounded rationality. This paper further seeks to coach advisers in how they might overcome these issues through actively listening, educating and learning to sincerely share client concerns after discovering the roots of these very real trepidations.
“It’s important that financial advisers learn more about behavioral finance and how to incorporate the concepts of this emerging science into their practice for the ultimate benefit of their clients,” said Robert Powell, editor of the Retirement Management Journal. “The paper goes a long way toward helping advisers learn what they need to know about the financial behaviors of their clients in or approaching retirement.”
“To be included among the past winners and chosen by this elite organization to be recognized is an unexpected honor that is truly beyond words,” commented Simon.
About the Thought Leadership Awards
The RIIA Thought Leadership Awards program consists of two categories, the Practitioner Thought Leadership Award and the Academic Thought Leadership Award where practitioners and scholars are recognized for their papers demonstrating excellence in original thinking and industry leadership on retirement management topics that contribute to RIIA’s Body of Knowledge, the Retirement Management Analyst℠ designation curriculum, and retirement-income planning and management knowledge in general. Their papers are published in the Retirement Management Journal℠ which this year is sponsored by BNY/Mellon.
For more information about RIIA, its mission, events, awards and member benefits, please visit www.riia-usa.org.
