Search
Speakers

Dr. Moira Somers

Clinical Neuropsychologist | Implementation Guru | Financial Services Consultant | Founder Money, Mind & Meaning

Training Wealth Advisors to Better Help Their Clients with the Challenges of Money

If your job requires you to give financial counsel to people, then you know that your technical expertise alone may not get the job done.

To be truly effective, financial professionals must also have a good understanding of applied human psychology – knowing how to connect, overcome bias, harness powerful influences, and prevent clients from sabotaging themselves. Gaining such a skillset can be quite a daunting task, especially since so much of it must be learned while in the midst of working with struggling or erratic clients.

That’s why so many financial professionals (including planners, accountants, business advisors, insurance experts, and banking personnel) turn to Dr. Moira Somers. She is the author of the highly anticipated book, Advice that Sticks: How to Give Financial Advice that People Will Follow. Her expertise lies in helping you quickly harness the science of behavior change as it applies to the particular domain of money.

She combines her direct clinical expertise as a financial psychologist with her deep knowledge of behavioral economics, non-adherence, and positive psychology. Funny, brainy, and profoundly practical, her presentations will turbo-charge the effectiveness of your advice.

Using the latest findings from science and practice, Dr. Somers addresses the following:

  • Why do people seek out professional advice but so often fail to take it?
  • What makes financial advice especially hard to follow?
  • What are the most common turn-offs committed by financial advisors? (Before your mind goes too far on this one, let me assure you that Dr. Moira is speaking of mistakes in advice-giving, not the other kind of turn-offs. Really, people….)
  • What can advisors do to radically increase the likelihood of follow-through?

The training offered by Dr. Somers is aimed at helping financial professionals make positive emotional connections with clients so that they can:

  • earn their trust
  • help them follow through with their commitments
  • retain them for life
  • and refer other ‘just-right clients’ to them

Tweaking how advice is delivered can make a world of difference — to clients AND to the advisors who serve them.

Getting better at giving great advice. Who wouldn’t want that?

 

Keynote Titles Include:

  • Why Good Clients Ignore Great Advice — Overcoming the Implementation Impasse
  • The Limits of Willpower (or, Why It All Goes to Hell at the End of the Day)
  • The Bad Habits of Highly Annoying Leaders
  • Women and Money: It’s…Complicated
  • Has Your Money Train Derailed? Getting Back on Track
  • Transition Fatigue: How to Help When Life Packs a Wallop
  • Money and Its Disorders: A Guide for Human Resources Personnel
  • Secrets of Financially Fabulous Families
  • Your Brain on Money — A Neuropsychologist’s Guide to Mental Wealth
  • The Psychologically Healthy Workplace

Moira Somers really went the extra mile to make her presentation not only fit our theme but be relevant to our audience. She presented at the end of a long, intense day at the conference, and not only held our attendees’ attention but really made them think about how they work with their clients. She was a delight to work with, and I highly recommend her.”
Mary Corbin, the Financial Planning Association

Her forthcoming book, Advice that Sticks, address what traditional training ignores: the need for financial professionals to work more effectively with client AND advisor psychology.

 

 

 

 

Travels From: Canada
City: Winnipeg
$10,001 to $15,000

Biography

Dr. Moira Somers is a clinical neuropsychologist, professor and financial recovery expert based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work is divided between training/consultation and direct client services. Both areas of work allow her to dig deep into what she considers to be some of the most fascinating aspects of human behavior, including:

  • Why is it so hard for people to change, even when they really want to?
  • How do feelings and beliefs hinder or help that change, particularly when it comes to the domain of money?
  • What can be done to enhance successful outcomes?

Dr. Somers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University of Manitoba. She is also a senior faculty member at the Sudden Money Institute, where she trains advisors on the psychological factors at play during major life transitions.  Current projects include the development of a Transition Fatigue Questionnaire, and objective testing of financial planners’ interpersonal effectiveness.  An expert in financial psychology, she trains financial professionals across North America to work more effectively with the whole spectrum of challenges their clients bring to them: erratic decisions ,overwhelming stress, procrastination, family challenges, etc.

She has delivered keynote addresses to organizations such as the National Football Players’ Association, the Financial Planning Association Annual Retreat, and National Life. She leads in-house or on-line workshops on a wide array of topics including client resistance and readiness, building personal and professional resilience, and how to work with cognitively compromised clients. Her forthcoming book, Advice that Sticks, address what traditional training ignores: the need for financial professionals to work more effectively with client AND advisor psychology.

BACKGROUND

Clinical neuropsychologist and professor in the Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University of Manitoba.

Consultant and trainer for wide array of financial organizations, including regulatory bodies, banking institutions, small private wealth management firms, and major accounting, insurance, and investment companies.

Keynote speaker to organizations including National Football League Players’ Association, FPA Retreat, Institute of Advanced Financial Planning, and Bob Veres’ Insiders Forum.

Senior faculty member, Sudden Money Institute, with responsibility for implementation and readiness training, Women in Transition special interest track, and research on transition fatigue.

Executive coach (certified in Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Centered Coaching) C-level executives and business owners.

Consultant to Human Resources departments on financial stress in the workplace.

Private practice in wealth psychology, with a focus on the needs of high net worth clients and their families.

Presentations

The plan is logical; the advice is sound; the client is in full agreement. And yet – NOTHING is happening! Is the client stuck, resistant, or just plain ornery? How you choose to frame this inaction can affect everything that follows in your work together.

Dr. Somers has long studied what happens in this moment of a relationship, and how to affect more positive outcomes. Join in as she describes how people go about deciding to change and what differentiates successful from unsuccessful changers and change agents. Learn how to create a working alliance that is stronger than ever.

Or, “Why It All Goes to Hell at the End of the Day.” Have you ever wished that you had more willpower? Groaned about how hard it is to resist temptation? If so, you’re in good company! Just think of what you could accomplish – at work AND in your personal life – if you had greater reserves of self‐discipline. But the fact is that we often seem to run out of willpower at critical moments. In this engaging talk, learn from the science of positive psychology how you can:

  • Use better strategies that will preserve your willpower for when it’s really needed.
  • Increase your self‐discipline.
  • Reach your goals (and help your team or clients reach theirs) with fewer setbacks along the way.

Effective leadership is often less about the To-Do list than it is about the To-Don’t list. Yet strong leaders are often blind to their own foibles and may keep practicing the very habits that limit the growth and effectiveness of those around them. In this interactive session, Dr. Somers will teach:

In this interactive session, Dr. Somers will teach:

  • How leaders can get accurate feedback on the habits they need to change.
  • How to cultivate the skills of non-defensiveness and receptivity to change.
  • Effective means of follow-through to ensure lasting behavior change.

Areas of expertise

  • Personal Finance
  • Psychology
  • Psychotherapy
  • Personal Development
  • Coaching
  • Stress & Stress Management
  • Communication
© 2023 Ro Morrison & Assoc.