On 18 November STEP will hold its third webinar in the Thought Leadership webinar series, following webinars on the remote witnessing of wills and wealth taxes earlier in the autumn.

Mental Health and the Financial Advice Relationship will be chaired by Mark Dunkley TEP, Shakespeare Martineau LLP (UK); and the panel will consist of Carol Lynde, Bridgehouse Asset Managers (Canada) and Adam Wiseman, Bridgehouse Asset Managers Advisory Panel (Canada).

Mental health has traditionally been treated either an afterthought, or in some circles of life not taken seriously at all. However due to recent and ongoing changes in trends, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, it has become a matter of increasing public and global concern.

Mental health disorders cover areas such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and alcohol/substance abuse; and it is estimated that around 10 per cent of the global population has some form of mental health disorder (source). In the UK, it is estimated that one in six people will experience a common mental health problem every week (source). In Canada, half of the population will have, or will have had, a mental illness by age 40.

Based on this increased awareness, advisors are now having to ask how they can detect an illness early on in a client relationship, and how they should effectively manage it to avoid any harm to the client’s health, finances, reputational risk, or damage to the advisor’s ongoing relationship with the client.

Using insights gained from research, advisor interviews and mental health expertise, this upcoming event will give an overview of the current mental health landscape and its impact on investors, providing advisors with a suite of educational tools and real life scenarios that they can apply with their clients who may be experiencing mental health issues.

• Thought Leadership Series;
• Mental Health and the Financial Advice Relationship, 18 November;
• SIG Spotlight Week Webinar: Financial Abuse Re-visited and Deprivation of Liberty Issues post-COVID-19 – 4 December;
• Next in Thought Leadership series: Residency and Domicile: what will be ‘home’ in a post-COVID-19 world?  27 January.

Robert Carington is Policy Executive at STEP