How much does human psychology really cost an investor? Research suggests the answer is measurable, recurring, and largely overlooked. In this episode of the Bondfish Human Finance Podcast, host Anatoly Shkareda, Chief Marketing Officer at Bondfish, is joined by Alessandro Raiser, founder of FinanSee, an AI-powered behavioral finance platform built to help both individual investors and financial institutions understand the emotional and cognitive patterns driving investment decisions. The conversation covers the science behind behavioral biases in portfolio management, the dual B2B and B2C architecture of FinanSee's platform, Alessandro's own investment philosophy, and the realities of building a fintech startup in southern Europe.
The Core Problem
Alessandro Raiser opened by grounding the conversation in a striking empirical finding. Academic research, he explained, indicates that behavioral biases drain an average of 2% from investor portfolio performance each year, a figure that holds regardless of the asset class being traded or the prevailing market environment. Whether an investor is holding bonds, index ETFs, or actively trading options, the emotional and cognitive tax is broadly consistent. For long-term investors, the compounding effect of this annual drag is substantial.
Raiser was careful to draw a distinction between two separate branches of behavioral finance. The first concerns the aggregate behavior of market participants, where mass psychology drives the large fluctuations that dominate financial news. The second, and the one FinanSee is built around, is the personal dimension: how an individual investor's own psychological profile shapes the decisions they make, often without their awareness. Both branches are real, but only the personal dimension is something an individual can meaningfully act on.
“Average 2% of your portfolio performance is dictated just by your biases, and that is regardless of the market situation and which kind of asset class you are investing in.
— Alessandro Raiser, Founder, FinanSee
Raiser also noted a meaningful relationship between investment time horizon and the intensity of bias. In long-term investing, there is more time for reflection and course-correction, meaning biases tend to be milder in their impact. In short-term trading, however, the compressed decision window and heightened emotional stakes bring cognitive errors to the surface far more readily. Panic, overconfidence, and confirmation bias all amplify under the pressure of fast-moving markets.
The Platform
Raiser described FinanSee as a profiling tool built on three interconnected pillars. The first is a standard risk assessment, functionally similar to the MiFID suitability questionnaire that regulated financial institutions already use to assess clients. The second adds an evaluation of 15 of the most common behavioral biases, examining how strongly each tendency manifests in the individual's decision-making patterns. The third pillar assesses the investor's knowledge of and interest across 20 different asset classes. Combining all three, FinanSee generates a richer and more personalised portfolio allocation recommendation than any single-pillar tool can achieve.
The platform operates across two distinct markets. For wealth managers, private banks, and family offices, FinanSee functions as an enhancement to existing client relationship tools: instead of relying solely on standard risk profiling, advisers can use FinanSee's behavioral data to understand client tendencies more precisely and offer more tailored product recommendations. The B2C consumer application, available on both the App Store and Google Play, serves retail investors directly. Here, the platform acts as a personal behavioral coach, surfacing the gap between an investor's actual behavior and what a rationally optimised allocation might look like for their profile. Premium users gain access to gamified bias-reduction exercises and a personalised AI chatbot trained on their individual data, designed to help them navigate moments of panic or impulsive decision-making in real time.
“For the retail investor, the added value is finding a personal behavioral coach, because the AI gives you the tools to check what differs from your standard tailor-made portfolio choice and where you can try to overcome your biases over time.
— Alessandro Raiser, Founder, FinanSee
Practical Application
Throughout the episode, Raiser drew on his own investment experience to illustrate how even well-informed investors remain susceptible to the biases they can name and describe. He acknowledged overconfidence and confirmation bias as his two most persistent tendencies: the first leads him to hold convictions more tightly than the evidence may warrant; the second causes him to seek out information that supports a thesis he has already formed rather than actively looking for disconfirming signals. Knowing these biases exist, he observed, does not automatically neutralise them, because they are embedded in personality rather than simply in ignorance.
Based on the insights surfaced across the conversation, a practical framework emerged for individual investors looking to manage the behavioral dimension of their portfolios.
Profile yourself before you invest. Understanding your dominant biases, risk tolerance, and asset class familiarity provides a foundation for portfolio construction that a generic risk questionnaire alone cannot supply. Tools such as FinanSee's three-pillar profiling are designed to surface this self-knowledge systematically.
Anchor the majority of your portfolio in long-term, low-churn instruments. Raiser described his own allocation as 80 to 85% in ETFs and corporate bonds held over a long horizon, with minimal trading activity. This structure limits the number of emotionally charged decisions and reduces the window for biases to operate.
Contain higher-risk, shorter-term activity to a defined allocation. Raiser reserves roughly 15% of his portfolio for medium-term equity positions and a small allocation to leveraged instruments such as options, treating this segment as structurally ring-fenced from his core holdings. Knowing in advance that this is the "active" portion prevents it from expanding under the influence of overconfidence.
Only invest in what you genuinely understand. For individual bond selection, Raiser described a consistent principle: he focuses on companies he already follows and understands, rather than reaching into unfamiliar markets for yield. Familiarity reduces the risk of being caught off-guard by developments he would have anticipated had he known the issuer better.
Use behavioral tools as a check during high-stress moments. The value of AI-assisted coaching tools is greatest precisely when emotions are running high: in market downturns, during sharp reversals, or when an impulsive move feels compelling. Building a habit of pausing to consult a structured framework before acting can interrupt the emotional reflex before it becomes a transaction.
Market Context
A thread running through the episode was the challenge and opportunity of launching a B2B fintech in Spain and Italy. Raiser, a management engineer by training who spent years in corporate roles before taking what he described as a sabbatical to pursue entrepreneurship, offered a candid assessment of both markets. In Italy, he noted, the main obstacle for early-stage companies is not the quality of ideas but the difficulty of winning a first institutional client without an established reputation. The southern European startup ecosystem, while historically slower to develop than northern or Baltic European counterparts, has improved significantly; Madrid in particular has become a genuinely competitive environment with active public support infrastructure and an increasingly international investor base.
FinanSee's immediate geographic focus is Spain and Italy, chosen for the obvious reasons of network and market familiarity, but the platform's underlying architecture is oriented toward the entire European Union. The profiling algorithm is designed to comply with GDPR from the outset, making it deployable across all EU member states without requiring a country-by-country regulatory rebuild. Raiser expressed confidence that the Spanish ecosystem, including events such as the Web Summit held in Lisbon on the broader Iberian Peninsula, was attracting international capital and talent at a pace that would benefit companies like FinanSee as they scaled.
Summary