Nitrogen’s proven tools will help you have more meaningful conversations with your clients based on their underlying risk metrics, helping them visualize and understand what you’ve been telling them for years. Using a Risk Target or Risk Questionnaire to capture a Risk Number® can precisely measure the appetite and capacity for risk that each of your clients has and demonstrate their alignment, or need for alignment, with the portfolios you’ve so carefully built for them.
In This Article
Getting Started
1. First, you'll need to create a client profile if you haven't already done so:
2. Next, click Risk Number just above Create Portfolio and you'll be presented with the options to Set a Risk Target or Use a Questionnaire:
Options for Sending a Questionnaire
In Nitrogen, you have the ability to capture multiple risk tolerances and resolve any differences between those results into a single Risk Number for the client. This workflow is crucial in keeping both members of a household engaged throughout the process. Launch the Next-Gen Risk Questionnaire in your browser, email it to your client directly from our system, or copy a link to the questionnaire to send out yourself. You will notice a few new optional fields you can pre-fill before launching or emailing the questionnaire:
- Client Name: If you’re working with a household (Wayne and Dianne Diaz, for example) you have the option to define a more specific “Client Name” for the questionnaire (Wayne OR Dianne). Whatever you type here, will be used to greet the client on the first slide of the questionnaire you create. If you don’t define a client name for the questionnaire, we’ll still greet the client on the first slide of the questionnaire, with the name saved for them within Nitrogen.
- Purpose: The purpose field provides you with additional flexibility when assessing a client’s Risk Number®. Whether you’re aiming to address risk tolerance at a more general goal-level, or you want to capture one per account type, defining a “Purpose” for a questionnaire allows you to define the investments a given questionnaire pertains to. Anything defined in this field will be pushed to the welcome slide of the questionnaire.
- Investment Amount: As always, you can pre-fill the investment amount for a questionnaire prior to sending or launching it.
Once you've selected which questionnaire you'd like to send, it is time to choose how you'll send it. There are three ways you can send a questionnaire to a client.
- Share Link: Generate a link to the questionnaire that you can copy and paste into an email to the investor. This is a great option if you want to use your own customized email template, or to include the questionnaire link along with other notes to the client - such as a meeting invitation.
- Email: Send a formatted email directly from Nitrogen to the client (and a copy to yourself), or choose to send it just to yourself so you can add a few personal touches before forwarding it on to the client.
- Launch Now: Choose this option if you're completing the questionnaire in person with the client. This allows advisors to walk investors through the questionnaire and offer value along the way. Many advisors provide this service as a benefit to a fee-based relationship, while others charge a consulting fee.
Pro Tip: Use Launch Now to have the questionnaire open and ready on a laptop or iPad for when your client arrives at the office.
Additional Note: When generating a link for your client via the Share Link or Email options listed above, the link will remain valid for two weeks. For security purposes, after two weeks, if your client or prospect has not taken action, the link will expire, and you will need to repeat the process.
Sending Multiple Risk Questionnaires
When emailing a questionnaire directly from within Nitrogen, we’ll pre-fill the email address you have associated with the client above, but you can now edit this email address - allowing you to send questionnaires directly to anyone of a client or household’s other email addresses without editing the one you’ve saved as their primary email.
This workflow allows you to create and send multiple risk questionnaires for a given client or household. To do so, simply click + Add Questionnaire at any time.
Confirming a Risk Number
Whether your client has taken one questionnaire or taken one for each account, you’ll have a chance to review their results and confirm their final Risk Number. When all questionnaires have been completed, you’ll notice the client’s Risk Number in a Pending status from the Client List. A Pending Risk Number can be confirmed by navigating to that client’s Risk Number tab and clicking Assign Risk Number.
In the Risk Number confirmation screen, you can manually adjust the suggested Risk Number by clicking the up and down arrows next to our recommendation or select different combinations of questionnaire results to recalculate the best fit. From this screen, you also have the ability to record and save any notes about a particular Risk Number confirmation. These notes will persist along with the Risk Number once you’ve clicked Confirm Risk Number at the bottom right of the page.
Note: If the client has only taken one questionnaire, you’ll have a one-click option available from the Risk Number tab to “Confirm the Result” as their Risk Number, or enter the same confirmation workflow by clicking “Manually Adjust Risk Number”
Additional Options
Clicking the More Options menu on an individual questionnaire will present the following additional options:
- Set As Client Risk Number: Automatically confirms the questionnaire result as a client’s Risk Number
- Archive: Archives the questionnaire result, removing it from the list of questionnaires in consideration towards a client’s Risk Number
- Resend Questionnaire: Archives the existing questionnaire result and pre-fills a new questionnaire form with its same configuration of type, name, purpose, and investment amount
- Delete: Permanently deletes the questionnaire
We’ve also added a Risk Number Archive, allowing you to keep track of historical questionnaires a client has completed without cluttering their Active questionnaires list. You can move questionnaires from Active to the Archive at any time. Additionally, any time a client’s Risk Number is updated, the previous Risk Number (along with any associated notes) will be saved in the Archive.
Got any questions? Check out our Best Practices article for how to best take advantage of the Nitrogen questionnaires in your practice.