Wei-Yin Hu

Vice President, Financial Research and Strategy

With more than 30 years of experience, Wei helps lead a team of financial researchers and portfolio strategists who work on stimulating problems that also have a real-world impact on people’s lives. Their responsibilities include the development of the analytical models that generate Edelman Financial Engines recommendations and forecasts, as well as the design of new advice and planning services. Wei and his team focus on designing solutions to financial problems while teaching our planners and clients about why those are good approaches and developing ways to coach clients away from emotion-based decisions that can negatively affect them.

Wei joined Edelman Financial Engines in 2000 and has expertise in asset pricing, capital markets, taxation, and retirement economics. Previously, he was an assistant professor at UCLA, teaching undergraduates and PhD students in the field of public finance. His courses covered topics related to retirement economics, such as the interaction of Social Security, taxes and retirement and savings decisions. Wei appreciates the opportunity to feel a real-world immediacy with his work at EFE – something that was harder to experience in academia – and feels EFE is in an amazing niche within the industry of financial services where our main goal is to help people to help move their financial lives forward.

Wei earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Ph.D. in economics, both from Stanford University. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife and two teens. Both Wei and his wife volunteer heavily with school-related groups, and he was an active volunteer with Boy Scouts of America for many years. Other interests include reading, cycling, hiking and walking. Among his non-fiction reading, Wei is particularly drawn to neuroscience and psychology books because he finds any exploration into what “makes us tick” and what leads us to make bad decisions (financial or otherwise) is endlessly fascinating.