Advisors can get to know their clients a little better with the help of a new online tool launched by Montreal-based Standard Life Assurance Company of Canada on Tuesday.
“Advisors spend hours trying to understand their clients,” says Jennifer Gregory, national vice president, business development, group savings and retirement, Standard Life Canada, “[and this tool] helps them have a different conversation with their clients.”
The tool, called the Motion Profiler, was created using information from the Environics Research Group’s Social Values Monitor. The profiler is meant to help Canadians, and their advisors, better understand their financial mindsets.
“Risk tolerance [questions] are really all about money,” says Gregory, “this questionnaire will prompt the conversation with the advisor about why [someone is] saving or why [someone is] not saving enough and give [the individual] confidence to be able to put a plan into action.”
The Motion Profiler is a part of a wider Standard Life campaign called the Financial Inertia program, the goal of which is to help Canadian investors feel more confident about their finances. The tool can be accessed by anyone for free at Financial Inertia’s website. Once on the site, visitors will be asked whether they are an individual investor, advisor, group retirement plan member or employer.
Users will answer a series of questions around several topics including the person’s investing concerns, job security and economic confidence. Once the questionnaire is completed, the user is given a score out of 100 and assigned one of the following five profiles: Concerned Investor, Cautious Analyzer, Contented Passive, Confident Accumulator and Sophisticated Investor.
Each profile description includes an investor snapshot and describes the financial confidence, engagement, investment decision-making and investment preference of that person. For instance, a Contented Passive investor is likely to be a technician or sales manager who often has a limited understanding of investments and generally makes informed decisions based on recommendations from a financial advisor.
Survey results can be emailed directly to the individual’s financial advisor or saved as a PDF. Users can also email the results to themselves for their own records.
The profiler will help advisors better understand clients even as their circumstances change, says David MacDonald, group vice president, custom and financial research, financial services division, Environics Research Group. For example, the tool can show clients who they are as investors, what’s important to them in life and the type of advisor-client relationship they need to reach their goals.
Advisors can also use the tool to get married clients on the same page financially. Have each client fill out the questionnaire on their own, suggests MacDonald, and see where the differences lie. “Compare notes,” he says. “Often in married couples or partnerships one partner will have a more aggressive or different outlook on investing than the other. “