Our investment management process - risk profiling

A lot of our clients like to know how we go about recommending and managing their investments to ensure they are suitable for both their attitude to risk and also their required rate of return.

Our basic process starts with a risk profile rating. This allows us, on a scale of 1-10, to assess what kind of investments are likely to be right for our clients. A risk rating of 1 would indicate that a client requires as little risk as possible, but in return would be happy for a low rate of return, whereas a rating of 10 would indicate a client that is happy to invest 100% in equities to give their money the best possible chance of returning as much as possible. Our risk rating process is provided by Distribution Technology, a firm which specialises in risk assessment and modelling.

We generally find that our clients fall into the range of 4-7; happy with some fluctuation in return for an annual return which is much better than a savings account, but everyone is different so it is important for us to ensure that a client's risk rating is both assessed at the start of our relationship and also going forward to see if anything has changed.