Abstract

Personal financial planning (PFP) is a multidisciplinary activity that involves several dimensions and actors including financial institutions, financial advisors, certified financial planners, technology, specialists (e.g., tax, legal) as well as clients. Within two essays, this thesis addresses the following three research questions: 1) What is the impact of the financial advisor on clients’ financial outcomes? 2) How do certified financial planners perceive themselves in the PFP environment? 3) How does the mobilization of two resources, i.e., financial planning software and specialists, by a certified financial planner affects clients’ financial outcomes?

While the evidence suggests that financial advisors have an impact on their clients’ financial outcomes, there is disagreement as to the scope and nature of this impact. Relying on three complementary theoretical lenses (agency theory, trust theory and concept of knowledge) and the six steps of the financial advisory process, the first essay addresses the first research question by proposing a multi-theory model that reconciles findings from previous studies and bridges the gap between research and practice. The model illustrates how the financial advisor impacts each step of the financial advisory process. Furthermore, by being practice-grounded, our model highlights the opacity and complexity of the services offered by the financial advisor and helps to determine whether the advisor’s impact will be positive or negative for their clients.

Addressing the other two research questions, the second essay focuses on certified financial planners and on the resources they can mobilize to serve their clients. Toward that end, we interview 25 certified financial planners. Regarding their self-perception, consistent with existing literature, planners see themselves primarily as generalists. However, we add an important nuance by proposing three different profiles: the true generalist, the generalist focusing on one of the seven PFP areas of expertise, and the generalist focusing on one type of client. These three profiles are represented on a generalist-specialist continuum to illustrate their positioning in relation to the other profiles. As for the PFP software, we show that it features all the characteristics of a decision support system (DSS). Regarding specialists, we again draw on agency theory, trust theory and the concept of knowledge to illustrate, through the six steps of the PFP process, that the involvement of specialists, in-house or external to the financial institution for which the planner works, will have a positive or negative impact on clients’ financial outcomes. Finally, we develop a model explaining how financial planners, the help they receive from resources (PFP software and specialists), and the limited access to these resources imposed by financial institutions, enable or prevent planners from meeting their clients’ needs.