Reconciling Self-Assessed with Psychometric Risk Tolerance: A New Framework for Profiling Risk among Investors

Financial advisors need to assess their clients’ risk profile to properly manage their portfolio risk and comply with regulatory provisions. Assessing an investor’s financial risk tolerance (FRT) is a challenge in the advisory process and none of the existing measures can be easily employed on a large scale. Previous literature has revealed a gap between self-assessed and psychometrically assessed measures of FRT (PA_FRT) but has not yet offered a solution to fill this gap. Thus, we propose a model that consistently estimates the PA_FRT by leveraging retail investors’ self-assessment and other information typically submitted in standard bank questionnaires. Our model represents a promising tool for financial advisors looking to improve their customers’ risk profiling.