Advisor Identifies 3 Client Personality Types

In work and in life, know thyself is Chris White’s mantra.

White is the author of the recently published  Working With the Emotional Investor. Financial Psychology For Wealth Managers. A CFA for more than 25 years, White is a senior portfolio manager at Hemenway Trust Company LLC, a New Hampshire-chartered wealth management firm.

Based in Boston, White advises high-net-worth individuals, couples, families and institutions on retirement planning, building investment portfolios and  multi-generational wealth management.

It was only after White, 66, examined traumas and relationships from his early life that he understood how profoundly his behavior had been affected by his painful past. His wealthy father had been “a cold, distant, and emotionally unavailable man;” his “cold and aloof” mother had curtly fired the adult who gave the young White emotional warmth and acceptance -- his governess.

“This early and painful loss of ‘perfect love’ affirmed in my young psyche the importance of relationships, stability, stewardship, love and connection with others, and helped form the basis of the person I am today.”

White has crafted what he says is a radical approach to wealth management. Chapters of his book are devoted to “Understanding a Person’s Emotional Template,” “The Psychology of Money and the Emotions of Investing,” “Understanding Your Client’s Engagement Style” and “Nurturing Client Relationships for the Long Term.”

“Our profession has come late to acknowledging this whole area of emotions in working with individuals. But in my experience, it is the glue that holds the relationships together, what makes it interesting and turns it into a higher calling,” White said by telephone from Boston.

White says his approach is radical because he goes beyond what many advisors acknowledge: that investing is emotional. “My book goes deeply into the emotional component of investor behavior by identifying three investor types, shows how these types behave in low-stakes and, more importantly, high-stakes situations and discusses how investing is often done in high-stakes situations since it involves the commitment of our own personal capital,” White said.

The three investor types he identifies are the Protector, people who, like White, strive to protect the best interests of others; the Survivor, whose childhood losses inspire them to zealously safeguard financial security; and the Fixer, who seeks control and to exert power over all phases of life.

White’s influences in identifying these types include the studies and research of social psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (Nobel Prize-winners for their work in behavior and finance); Jason Zweig, author of Your Money and Your Brain; Richard J. Davidson, author (with Sharon Begley) of The Emotional Life of the Brain, and especially, of Cambridge, Mass., psychologist and consultant David Kantor.

Kantor, founder of the Kantor Institute, Cambridge, and creator of the Four Player Model, is a clinical psychologist and author who has taught at Harvard University and Tufts University. From Kantor’s personality models, White learned a basis for understanding human behavior -- that the human personality (emotional template) is formed from childhood experience.