for financial advisers only

Assessing your client’s
Appetite for risk’

Getting your clients to understand and agree their ‘appetite for risk’ is one of the key stages in the investment process. The task of risk profiling and risk discussion can however be time consuming. Completing the client questionnaire, inputting the answers online and then discussing the results are typically done at separate times.

To make the whole process more efficient for you and your clients, our app does it all in one go. It allows you to complete the questionnaire, get the risk score and then discuss with your client what that risk score means, during a single meeting.

Getting a risk score

The app uses the questions from Skandia’s existing online risk profile questionnaire to determine a client’s risk score, from 1 (low) to 10 (high). This score is a measure of the client’s willingness to accept investment risk. You can save individual risk assessments on the app, allowing you to return to them at a later date if required.

Having a risk discussion

The app then helps you have a risk discussion with your client by explaining what each risk score means. It shows the range of annual 'expected returns' for Skandia's risk levels 1 to 10 and enables you to compare the risk profile result with at least one other comparison risk level.

You can then discuss the client’s score alongside the other elements of investment risk, such as inflation and credit risk or the risks of a particular type of asset. Remember, the client score is a measure of their willingness to accept investment risk. The risk discussion enables you to compare this to their capacity for risk, as well as the risk required. In this way you can agree a final risk level.

Following the discussion, you can email back to your office a PDF, including details of the discussion and the final agreed risk score for use with Skandia’s online investment tools.

Accessing the app

The app is available for free via iTunes and Android Market (now Google Play).

The new iPad version provides an enhanced user experience compared to the iPhone and Android versions. Thanks to the larger screen size of the iPad the risk discussion feature of the app now enables you to compare against two other risk levels, rather than the one comparison risk level on the iPhone version. The iPad app is intuitive to use, and we’ve given you more options when it comes to saving and sharing the output PDF. We’ve also included a number of useful tips within the app to help you make best use of it.