Investing can be a fraught experience for clients, but a new survey of advisors finds that client anxiety has abated over the past year.
At the same time, more advisors than in 2013 say client risk aversion is on the rise, with global tensions a major source of concern.
Hartford Funds conducted its second annual survey of 103 advisors in mid-August.
Fifty-two percent of advisor respondents said clients had let their anxiety influence their investment decisions in the last year, compared with 57% who reported this in the 2013 survey.
Forty-eight percent of advisors said their clients' investing had been unaffected by anxiety.
However, 35% of survey participants expected their clients' risk aversion to increase over the next 12 months, significantly up from 17% who had expected increased risk aversion a year ago.
What keeps advisors up at night? Not surprisingly, international turmoil, which 40% of respondents cited as their biggest or second biggest concern.
Perhaps related to this finding, Hartford Funds said in a statement, 49% of advisors reported that international equities were the investments that sparked the most anxiety among clients.
