Risk Profile

Assessing your Investor Risk Profile

When investing it is important that you consider the level of risk you may be taking on as well as the return you would like to achieve from an investment.  You may need to consider a trade-off between the risk you are willing to take and the level of return you would like to achieve, or would need to meet your needs and objectives.

Risk can mean different things to different people. For example, investment risk could mean:

• the possibility of a loss of capital (permanent reduction in value of an investment), or
• the level of volatility of an investment (short-term changes in value – up and down), or
• the risk of an asset not producing enough income to live on, or
• the risk of an asset not growing enough to keep up with the rising cost of living.

By working through this section, our aim is to understand more about:

• your risk tolerance,
• your risk appetite,
• your risk capacity and how to balance this against your desire to achieve your needs and objectives

This will help us work out an appropriate level of investment risk for your personal situation, and the type of investments and strategies that correspond to this.

Risk tolerance

A very important part of giving you appropriate advice is assessing how willing you are to tolerate changes in asset values in the short term. These changes, known as “volatility”, represent one type of investment risk. Investors take risk because they may need or want to trade-off short-term stability in asset values for the possibility of higher investment returns in the long term.

Your risk tolerance has a lot to do with how you feel about these short-term changes in value.

Ultimately, your risk tolerance is the amount of risk that you are prepared to take and the degree of uncertainty or volatility that you are willing to accept when investing to achieve your needs and objectives.

Risk appetite

Risk appetite can be defined as the amount and type of risk that an individual is willing to take in order to meet their needs and objectives. Individuals will have different risk appetites depending on their needs and objectives. A range of appetites exist for different risks and these may change over time.

By using a combination of cash, defensive and/or growth assets, we can create an investment portfolio that is most appropriate for you. Examples of these assets are listed below.

• Cash – bank accounts, term deposits, loan offset accounts.
• Defensive – fixed interest (Australian and international) and bonds (government, corporate).
• Growth – shares (Australian or international) and property

Risk Capacity

Your risk capacity is the extent to which you can withstand the impact of unexpected, negative events, such as a loss of capital or a decline in asset value.

Generally, your risk capacity will be influenced by a range of factors, such as:

• how long you will continue to generate an income from employment or business (the longer you are generating an income, the more time you have to recover from negative events),
• how much you could reduce your expenses before this has an unacceptable impact on your lifestyle (you may be able to give up some items but not what you need or want the most),
• how far away your needs and objectives are and when you are likely to need access to income or your savings to pay for them – your investment timeframe.

You will most likely have needs and objectives that have different timeframes. Typically, the shorter the timeframe for an investment, the lower your capacity to take risk.

Put another way, if something negative occurs during a shorter timeframe, the less time your income, savings or investments have to recover.

Common characteristics and details for each timeframe are provided below: 

Short-term objectives (Investment timeframe – up to 3 years)

• Generally lump sum in nature, for example, saving $60,000 for a deposit on a house in 3 years.
• May also include short-term income requirements.

Medium-term objectives (Investment timeframe – between 3 and 5 years)

• Generally lump sum in nature, for example, saving $20,000 to upgrade a car in 5 years.
• May also include medium-term income requirements.

Long-term objectives (Investment timeframe – longer than 5 years)

• Generally focused towards providing a long-term regular income into the future, for example, accumulating sufficient savings to deliver an income of $40,000 per year through retirement.
• May also include your long-term lump sum expenses.
• Planning and ongoing reviews will be critical to the attainment of these objectives.

Your risk capacity will be one of the things we consider in working out the most appropriate investments and strategies for you.