There are a number of organizations who have local chapters to serve investment advisors. It’s our belief that these groups play a critical role in strengthening the profession.
That’s why we’ve launched a new program to allow local chapters to include an enhanced version of the Riskalyze Pro Free Plan in the package of benefits that they offer their members. Those advisors will get all the benefits of the Free Plan, plus the ability to analyze existing client portfolios. That’s an annual value of $600 per advisor.
We’re excited to do our part to help strengthen these local chapters, who in turn are using that strength to make investing better for Main Street. If you’re on the board of a local chapter, please email pro@riskalyze.com if you’d like to join the program and offer this benefit to your members.
Our vision is nothing short of transforming investing from something based on hunches, gut instincts and emotion, into a process based on science and data.
We started delivering that vision with Riskalyze.com for self-directed investors in early 2012. Our users built over $2 billion in portfolios last year, with the product featured in Barron’s, the New York Times Bucks Blog and on NPR.
Mere weeks ago, we delivered on that vision for advisors with the launch of Riskalyze Pro, which empowers investment advisors to win new clients, pinpoint risk expectations and design and analyze portfolios.
Today, we mark a third huge milestone in our history. We’re excited to announce that we’re going to equip every single investment advisor in the United States with the ability to align the risk in their portfolios with the risk tolerance of their active and prospective clients.
And we’re going to do that at an amazing price: $0.
With the Free Plan, advisors will be able to capture a basic snapshot of risk tolerance from their active or prospective clients, and mathematically match those clients with the appropriate asset class allocations for their risk tolerance.
Of course, it’s our hope that a lot of advisors joining the Free Plan will upgrade to the full-powered version of Riskalyze Pro. For just $99/month, they’ll gain:
- Deeper insights from prospective and active clients, like investment amount, financial situation and full risk/reward logic
- Existing portfolio analysis for prospective clients, using the exact funds or stocks that they currently own
- Customized model portfolios, using any publicly traded ETFs, mutual funds, stocks or custom investments you choose
- Advanced portfolio analytics, including interest rate forecasting and dividend yield analysis
- Marketing tools, including our personalized drip email engine
But even if an advisor never decides to upgrade to the paid plan, we want every single one of them to freely use Riskalyze Pro to grow their practice and protect their clients, with no obligation and no cost.
Riskalyze Pro is exclusively available to investment advisors (licensed as RIAs or Registered Reps). Instant account validation is available for advisors at many firms, and the rest are approved and receive their account access within 1-2 business hours.
Advisors can open their free account at pro.riskalyze.com.
How many times have we heard the disclaimer that “past performance isn’t necessarily a predictor of future success?” In investment advisor circles, that rule is carved in granite.
Even worse, there are times when a consensus forms that the future is quite likely to be distinctly different from the past. Today, that’s the bond market. With record-low interest rates being held down by artificial Federal Reserve action, many advisors strongly believe the bond market is in for some big pain.
Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve launched Interest Rate Forecasting. It’s the first-ever way for advisors to quickly and easily model their own assumptions about interest rates into the risk analysis for a portfolio.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say an advisor parked 70% of a client’s money in “safe” government treasuries…say 35% in TLT and 35% in TLH. The other 30% is in the stock market. Using the last five years of history, that suggests the portfolio has downside risk of -6% over the next six months.
Now let’s turn on the Interest Rate Forecast. What if rates rise 0.25%? That drives the portfolio risk up by 200 basis points to -8%. And if rates rise 0.5%? Risk skyrockets another 400 basis points to -12%.
That’s right. Interest rates climbing just one half of 1% would double the downside risk of this portfolio from -6% to -12%.
For a less extreme example, just apply the Interest Rate Forecast to building a portfolio using the Optimal Allocation tool. If your client’s goal is Capital Preservation, a flat interest rate environment would put 35% in bonds, 10% in stocks and 55% in cash.
But increase the interest rate forecast to just +5 bps, and the bond allocation drops to 17%, stocks drop to 9% and cash jumps up to 74%.
Riskalyze Pro delivers unprecedented visibility for advisors to measure, understand and align the risk in their portfolios with the risk tolerance of their clients. Interest Rate Forecasting is just one more great addition to this unique suite of tools that make risk an advisor’s best friend.
Interest Rate Forecasting is live today for all Riskalyze Pro customers. If you’d like a free trial for Riskalyze Pro, just register here and we’ll be in touch.
The word we hear most from investment advisors is: “finally.”
“Finally, I have a way to show my prospective clients how out of sync their current investments are with their tolerance for risk.”
“Finally, I can demonstrate to clients why they should go ahead and sell a stock that is making them $10,000 a month, if their top priority is constraining their risk.”
“Finally, I have a simple way to calculate and analyze the risk and correlations behind different portfolios and funds, without spending hours building a monstrous spreadsheet.”
Today, we’ve launched some great updates to Portfolios in Riskalyze Pro that make it faster, simpler and even more powerful than ever before.
Faster. When you create a new portfolio and add symbols to it, it’s lightning fast. Just type in the symbols as fast as you can and press enter after each one. We validate the symbol and grab the name in the background within a few seconds.
Simpler. If you’re building a model portfolio or analyzing a client’s existing portfolio, just fill in the allocations like a spreadsheet, and the analytics update as you go. It’s fast, efficient and almost instantaneous.
Even More Powerful. On the other hand, if you want Riskalyze Pro to find the optimal allocations for the portfolio, you just click that button, choose the Risk Tolerance setting (or a client’s unique Risk Fingerprint), and click Start.
Smart advisors will then use their own beliefs about the future (e.g. bonds have more risk than historical data might suggest, technology is undervalued, this client might have upcoming liquidity needs) to lock a few of the allocations.
To do that, you just click the lock beside that fund, enter a value and press enter. The rest of the portfolio will automatically recalculate around that constraint to try to hit the risk target you’re looking for.
And One More Thing. We’re still just scratching the surface of the analytics we intend to deliver for portfolios, but we did roll out something a lot of advisors have asked for: the trailing 12 month dividend for a portfolio.
Now, as you change a portfolio’s allocations, you’ll see a live look at the trailing twelve month dividend yield for that portfolio. It’s a great way to understand the dynamics of the potential return for the portfolio you’re building.
The updated Portfolios tool is live today for all Riskalyze Pro customers. If you’d like a free trial for Riskalyze Pro, just register here and we’ll be in touch.
The world of marketing has changed. Today, we need to build relationships with our prospective clients long before they ever get ready to come aboard and work with us. That’s especially true when it comes to investment advisors.
Today, we’re bringing amazing new email marketing tools to advisors in the latest upgrade to Riskalyze Pro. Our goal is to help advisors to build that relationship with their future clients, and let those prospects catch a glimpse of what they’re missing out on.
Many of our advisors first use the Clients tab to send a risk questionnaire to a prospective client. With just a few clicks, they can add that person to their email list, or they can easily type in a name and email address to add them to the list directly.
Because advisors can use our innovative Risk Fingerprint technology to understand the risk tolerance and investment goals of their prospective clients, it’s easy to personalize the email by choosing one of their model portfolios to track over time.
The result is a simple way to execute a highly effect drip marketing campaign that repeatedly demonstrates to prospective clients…”wow, if I’d signed up to work with this advisor a few months ago, my portfolio could be up quite a bit by now.”
We’re still just scratching the surface when it comes to helping our advisors win new clients and wow their existing ones, but the new Email tab is a great step forward. We can’t wait to show you what’s next.
If you’re already a Riskalyze Pro customer, give it a try today, and let us know if you’d like to join an upcoming online training session. If you’d like a free trial of Riskalyze Pro, just register here and we’ll be in touch.
Company News
