It’s almost universally accepted by advisors and prescribed by regulators (e.g. FINRA, FCA, and MFDA) that advisors assess a client’s risk tolerance before recommending investments. Knowing how much risk someone is willing to take is essential in building a suitable plan. However, assessing someone’s risk...
"The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help...
I recently had a discussion on Facebook with two financial advisors about risk tolerance questionnaires. The advisors expressed their frustrations with managing client behaviour. In one advisor’s words “there is an emotional element that is difficult to quantify” in questionnaires. Pocket Risk helps here but...
Headlines like Michael Kitces’ “The Sorry State Of Risk Tolerance Questionnaires” disappoint me but they also motivate. Criticism is how we improve and a new version of Pocket Risk is launching soon. Advisor technology has its challenges. Yet I rarely hear voices from the other...
In my previous article “What Is Risk Profiling – Part 1”, I showed how you can’t talk about, without understanding risk. And that the definition of risk has changed over the centuries due to academic research and human experience. The modern consensus is that risk is...
Risk profiling is the process of understanding how much risk is necessary for a client to achieve their financial goals. But this only begs the question – What is risk? The challenge for financial advisors is that the definition of risk keeps changing as research expands. In order...
Pocket Risk is now more mobile friendly for clients completing the questionnaire. Clients can complete the online questionnaire on their mobile devices. This will allow people to complete the questionnaire on the go and avoid the need to use a desktop. Previously it was was possible...
Pocket Risk has completed an integration with Redtail, the most popular advisor focused CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool in the market. The integration will allow users of Redtail to launch the Pocket Risk questionnaire from within Redtail and review client scores. The integration has been completed...
What happens to the returns of your clients’ portfolios when more and more companies go public later and later? Will returns be privatized and kept in the hands of the few? Staying Private As the Wall Street Journal noted Amazon went public at a market cap of...
It’s difficult to pick up an industry publication, attend a conference or speak to a fellow advisor without discussing the threat of robo-advisors. There is no doubt they will change our industry forever but what is the solution for the financial advisor? Over the last week...
