"I find Deakin's Psychometric Financial Risk Profiler (PfRP) a systematic way to understand client's risk psychology in investment. I am very impressed when I first applied it for my own analysis and found that it is accurate on my risk profile. My actual score and my estimated score was very close to each other (differed by 1 point).

I have used it with my clients and I find that it helps to enable them to understand their own risk tolerance in investment. I then followed up with an investment proposal for my clients and they are very pleased and have accepted my proposals.

Deakin's PfRP has helped both my clients and myself understand risk tolerance and hence it enabled me to make appropriate investment proposal for them and thus it further enhances the standard of my professional advice and service."

Karen Lee
Principal Consultant
KAREN LEE & ASSOCIATES SDN. BHD. (Co. No. 580953-X)

What I found very helpful was the level of details in the reports, which allows me to fine-tune my perception of the different ways married couples in particular view investment risk. That's why I have made it a point to roll out the test to some couples that I need to quickly get to know better.

Rajen Devadason,
CFP, CEO,
RD WealthCreation Sdn Bhd c/o MAAKL Mutual Bhd.

"...we are now using psychometric profiling for our clients. Before advising and recommending products to them, we must know their risk appetite. This test is very specific and reliable. (Source: "Of Transition & Evolution", 4E Journal)

Michael Tan
CEO, RHB Unit Trust

"Risk tolerance testing is a psychometric exercise and, in my opinion, FinaMetrica has the most advanced and practical tool that I have examined for measuring the risk tolerance of a financial advice client."

Wesley McMaster, CFP
Adj. Professor (Financial Planning) RMIT University
Past Chairman of the Financial Planning Association of Australia Ltd

"FinaMetrica reduces the subjectivity of assessing an individual's risk tolerance, confirms that risk tolerance was discussed and records the result. FinaMetrica assists our firm in systematising the processes we use to arrive at advice that is demonstrably appropriate for that individual or couple."

Suzanne Baldry
Baldry Financial Group

"My typical client is a retiree, whose financial needs require a 60%-70% allocation to growth assets. There's invariably a gap between risk tolerance and risk required. FinaMetrica helps me identify the gap and get my client to where they need to be ... and covers my backside!"

Tony Gillett
Retirewell Financial Planning

"If you are about risk minimization in business, FinaMetrica risk profiling is for you."

David Powell
AMP Financial Planning
(Personal Investor Top 50 Masterclass, 2001)

"We use the FinaMetrica questionnaire to more accurately establish exactly what the clients mean when they answer other questions to help us identify their risk rating."

Malcolm Whittle & Dorothea O'Farrell
Whittle & Skok Financial Services Pty Ltd
(Personal Investor Top 50 Masterclass, 2001)

"Each question helps focus the client on an issue. It makes our job easier when explaining risk."

"FinaMetrica risk profiling gives our clients a thorough analysis of how they feel about risk. Our clients therefore feel more comfortable with our classification of their profile. FinaMetrica has helped us lift the standard of our professional advice and service."

Charlie Sorel, Hillross
(Personal Investor Top 50 Masterclass, 1999)

"We are pleased to be taking a leading role in the provision of an easily-accessible new Australian technology that converges on so many aspects of the current financial planning agenda: improved compliance, superior 'know the client' capability, and accurate needs-based planning. FinaMetrica adds value to the ING Professional Comunity."

Lester Wills,
Industry Consultant and former Marketing Manager ING Funds Management (Australia)

"We often get comments from planners who use both FinaMetrica and VisiPlan describing the powerful impact that they achieve in their clients meetings by graphically demonstrating the interaction of risk tolerance, projected returns and the long term result on the clients savings, spending and net wealth."

Robert Green,
Founder Vision Financial Planning Software

"FinaMetrica has set a new international benchmark for investors' risk profiling. It is unparalleled in its ability to comprehensively reflect investors' attitudes to risk.

Without a clear and accurate picture of their risk profiles, it is unlikely that investors will be as comfortable with the investment's results achieved, or the paths taken to get there. In any event, an advisor is obviously engaging in a high risk activity by not pursuing a quality risk profiling approach."

Graham Rich,
Director - Brillient! and former Managing Director Morningstar
(Australia & New Zealand)

"Having completed over thirteen thousand advisors' compliance reviews, the inescapable conclusion is that current methods of assessing client's risk tolerance need much improvement. All advisors would benefit from having a systematic and documented approach to risk profiling."

Adam Tayler, THP Services

"FinaMetrica evidences to clients that we are up with modern planning techniques and have a genuine interest in knowing about them."

Fred Barnes, Succession Planning

"Because we forward the FinaMetrica's questionnaire to our prospective clients prior to the first meeting, clients feel that we're serious planners and are more connected to us."

Rick Maggi, Westmount Securities
"FinaMetrica improves client communication and subsequent advice."
Murray McLean, Ebony Rose Financial Strategists

"The FinaMetrica system is comprehensive and user-friendly, and easier to understand than others available. Its computer-generated report provides us, and our clients, with a plain English written record of their risk tolerance. We are confident of gaining a better understanding of how our clients look at investment risks and it is easily adaptable to our asset allocation process."

John Keeble, CIS Financial Services

"FinaMetrica is a more systematised way of doing risk profiling on clients."

Chris Bowyer, Future Strategies

"I believe that FinaMetrica is a world leader in the development of fundamentally sound, yet practical tools that enable practitioners to address the single most important factor in guiding clients towards a successful investment program - their personal risk profile."

Harold Evensky, CFP
Chairman,Evensky, Brown & Katz

"There are, of course, other instruments out there, and other methodologies [for risk tolerance assessment], but I haven't seen any that are as academically and procedurally defensible as this."

Bob Veres,
Publisher of 'Inside Information'
and voted as one of the five most influential US financial planning professionals in 2001 by readers of 'Financial Planning' magazine)

"FinaMetrica is at least one generation ahead of any questionnaires that I've seen. People who use FinaMetrica can be confident that it does a better job of measuring a person's risk tolerance than any that I've seen. The time required to answer all of the questions will be acceptable to all the people who take the test. The reaction of the people who have taken the test is that they accept the results and appreciate the plain English analysis."

Stan Smith,
Multi-Financial Services (USA)

"I have found the FinaMetrica system provides a unique, unbiased way to accurately assess a client's risk tolerance level."

Alan Fustey CFA
Elysium Wealth Management

"We use FinaMetrica for all new clients and re-test existing clients, if determined by their wishes or circumstances, every three years. We test each person (if a couple) separately. Alongside the tolerance result we also have questions that assess risk capacity to give an overall assessment of the level of risk to be used in portfolios. We have modified the linking spreadsheet for our portfolio models and use this to assist in plan writing. We add the page about historical returns in plans to illustrate how the index versions of FinaMetrica portfolios (not ours) have behaved. We also quote selected questions and answers in the plan."

Katrina Hawker CFP
Capital Investment Planning Ltd

"For the first time the client felt that they really understood the process and the trade off between risk and reward. In addition, we found that the clients became more engaged and thus interested in the whole investment process. They took ownership of their plan."

Jason Butler CFP
Bloomsbury Financial Planning

"I think it is one of the most comprehensive risk profiling systems on the market. We have used it for the majority of our clients and the feedbacks have been very positive."

Jim Clancy
Clancy's Financial Planning

"We try to use the risk profiling questionnaire as a mandatory action for all prospective clients prior to any first meeting. The vast majority of clients seemingly enjoy this process with a high proportion completing the questionnaire online. I find this provides a far more objective insight into client's views on risk before we have met and provide a meaningful starting point for any discussion during that first meeting.

From a compliance perspective, we have a policy of not providing advice unless a client has completed the questionnaire. Obviously, as and when required we will then reassess client's risk tolerance and discuss the outcome of their most recent questionnaire.

FinaMetrica is a more comprehensive and meaningful questionnaire than most clients have ever experienced, some comments upon its length and the appropriateness of certain questions, however a reluctance to complete this questionnaire is an early indication to us that the client may not be appropriate for our business!"

Duncan Orr CFP
Swindells & Gentry Financial Planning

"Not only has this provided a better way to discuss and implement issues about risk, FinaMetrica's systematic approach has provided a model for re-engineering some of our other financial planning processes."

Michael Hague CFP
The Consultancy Group

"Following our experiences with the market crash from 2000 to 2003 it became apparent that many clients were taking far more risk than they were comfortable with. FinaMetrica has now provided us with a much more robust system of assessing a client's attitude to risk.

Both our clients and advisors are much more comfortable with the results and our client's portfolios have been amended in order to reflect the FinaMetrica's results. We do review the level of risk being taken each year but very few clients have changed their views over the last three years.

No system can be perfect but there is no doubt that FinaMetrica provides a much more accurate assessment of risk than the old 1-10 scale where everyone was 4 or 5. You therefore have much happier clients in the long term."

Peter Adams
Probity Consulting

"The strength of the system is in helping with the advice process. There is no doubt in my mind that it helps us to help clients understand how to bridge the gap between their level of comfort and the level of risk required for them to meet their objectives - whether that is by modifying their objectives or by accepting a different level of risk."

James Martineau CFP
Morton-Wilson Limited