Simon Russell

I have known Simon Russell in a professional context for several years and would recommend him without hesitation as an expert consultant and speaker in the field of behavioural finance. I have personally attended a number of his educational workshops which I found insightful and practical for investors. Most recently I engaged Simon to deliver a workshop style session for a group of my clients. These were investment professionals who are involved in researching and recommending investment strategies to their own clients. Simon presented to them a session that highlighted the importance of incorporating behavioural considerations into their investment process. This included a practical, real time experiment to highlight the major impact of the "anchoring" bias. It was a particularly powerful experiment. Nearly all participants stated after the experiment that they were aware of the bias being tested for. Despite this, the results overwhelmingly demonstrated the clear presence of this bias amongst those investment professionals. Attendees provided very positive feedback on the event. Without a doubt it added value to them, and to my engagement with them in our professional relationship.
National Key Account Manager
Allan Gray 

Having been introduced to me by a highly regarded fund manager here in Sydney, my firm hosted Simon Russell for close to thirty behavioural finance workshops with our institutional, investor client base, across Australia and NZ. These focussed on strategies to deal with the increasing amount of noise in capital markets and the psychology of why different types of surprises occur yet continue to surprise us. Simon’s presentations, to some of Australasia’s most experienced fund managers, were provocative and engaging, & included examples and exercises that not only demonstrated the fallibility of investors’ cognitive processes but included practical solutions to avoid these all-too-common pitfalls.
Senior Institutional Sales
CLSA Australia

I heard Simon present at a high end institutional conference, and immediately realised the benefit of bringing his knowledge to a broader audience. I sit on the conference committee for a major pension conference, where we then tapped Simon for a brief presentation and panel discussion. The issues he covered in behavioural finance were relevant and well pitched!
Capital Group Companies

Simon Russell presented at one of our regular seminars from the Global Association of Risk Professionals, on the pitfalls and opportunities of behavioural economics on risk and investment decision making. He engaged the group and the material was debated extensively during as well as post seminar. Through his carefully selected cases and his group interactive challenges, Simon got the relevance of the topic across to senior risk professionals and raised their awareness of behavioural biases in risk management. Simon delivered these key insights in an engaging and fun manner.
Melbourne Director of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP), and
General Manager Risk & Performance Measurement
Treasury Corporation of Victoria
 
I asked Simon to speak at our Behavioural Finance and Capital Markets conference last year. Simon delivered the keynote address at the conference dinner, where he brought his unique insight from across the financial services industry about how behavioural finance research can and should be practically applied. His talk was peppered with entertaining anecdotes of the psychological quirks and pitfalls that even the most sophisticated professionals can fall prey to. His address was well received and I am pleased that he will be returning to speak at this year’s event too.
Professor of Finance
Department of Economics & Finance | La Trobe Business School