Tools and Features

Assessing a clients’ attitude to risk is a key aspect to giving appropriate advice. To assist with the fact finding process we provide a Risk Profiler tool. By analysing a client’s responses to a series of questions, this standalone tool provides a standardised approach with an auditable, client focused output.

Assessing Risk

Our investment and actuarial consultants have constructed a Risk Assessment Questionnaire of 12 questions that fall into three main categories. 

• Investment details - These questions obtain factual details about the client’s plans for the investment 
• Importance and expectations - These questions enquire about the relative importance of the amount being invested and the expected outcome. They are designed to assess the client’s capacity to take on risk
• Tolerance of investment risk - These questions investigate how the client feels about various possible outcomes from their investment portfolio

The responses that the client provides are analysed using our consultant’s algorithm to produce a risk score of 1 to 10.

Risk Score

The risk score is calculated in the following way.

• The possible answer for each question is assigned a score between 0 and 100 that indicates where the client sits in terms of risk.
• Each question also carries an 'importance weighting' reflecting how close a proxy the response is for investment risk.
• The weighting is applied to each score and these are summed to produce a total.
• This total is then mapped against the normal distribution of responses found in the population to produce the final risk score of 1 to 10. 1 reflects the most risk averse investors and 10 are those with the greatest appetite for investment risk.

The Report

The output from the Risk Profiler is a report that contains:

• a record of the client’s responses
• the risk score for the client
• an explanation of what the score means
• the ability to include your own bespoke commentary
• a declaration for the client to sign for your records

This is produced as a PDF which can be printed and emailed.

Benefits without additional costs

Adopting a standardised approach helps produce consistency across clients.  The ability to easily and quickly generate comprehensive risk assessment documentation, and retain copies agreed by clients, supports both transparency and compliance activities. These are benefits provided by our Risk Profiler.

It is available at no additional cost to Intermediaries that use the Novia Global Wealth Management Service and can be used for all of their clients.

Novia Global currently offers access to over 300 funds managers with more than 7000 funds.

Our asset selector offers a range of filters.  These can be used to reduce the funds displayed to those that are most relevant. 

You are able to generate an optimised range of assets based on a risk profile, from our Risk Profiler or from other sources, and all pre-built model portfolios are available for selection. These can be used as the basis of a new portfolio and users are able to amend the assets selected as required.

Users of the Novia Global Wealth Management Service have access to information on a comprehensive range of funds.  In addition to the Novia Global fund universe, we also supply information on an array of other universes including: UK ABI Pensions, UK Mutual, UK UT and OEICs, Hong Kong Mutual, Singapore Mutual, Malaysia Mutual, Germany Mutual, Switzerland Mutual, Offshore mutual, Ireland Offshore and Global ETFs.

Users are able to easily identify those assets that are of most interest using a wide range of filtering methods.

All key documentation provided by the fund managers is available for download. This includes documents such as the provider’s factsheet, Key Investment Information Document, Supplementary Information Document, Prospectus, Annual Report, Product Highlights Sheet and the Key Facts Statement.  They can be downloaded individually or can be selected through a download tool. This tool enables users to specify the reports that they want and to capture them as a single pdf, to the extent that regulation allows.

The download tool is also a gateway to dividend information that can be shown on screen or downloaded into an excel document.

To help with fund selection we have also included a comparison tool.  This allows users to select up to four funds from those that they have placed in the portfolio for investigation and produce a pdf report that shows:

• type
• charges
• historic performance
• ratios and risk measures
• underlying holdings

This is highly flexible and provides documentation that will help to communicate the strengths and weaknesses of funds across sectors, currencies, share classes etc.

We give Advisers, Private Banks and Trust Companies the ability to “drill down” within portfolios to analyse asset allocation, geographical/ sector split, return compared to benchmarks and risk rating. Our portfolio scanner, which provides this breakdown of a client’s investments, is called P-Scan. It is available to use as a standalone tool for initial client research or integrated into a broader portfolio review. The reports generated are considered useful for client updates and annual review packs.  They can be tailored to your requirements and your firm logo can be added.

This tool covers all assets offered by the Novia Global Wealth Management Service (the Novia Global Asset universe) and 11 other fund universes eg Singapore Mutual, Germany Mutual etc. The assets include Societe d’Investissement a Capital Variable (SICAVs), Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS), Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), alternative investments, structured products and direct investment in equities and bonds. 

Our Model Portfolio Manager (MPM) tool enables Advisers (with the appropriate discretionary powers), Private Banks, Trust Companies and Discretionary Fund Managers (DFMs) to take full administrative control over their model portfolios, creating and managing them on line. 

MPM is also linked to our other analysis tools so models can be researched at the point of construction. There is an instant submit, with no “overnight refresh” so Advisers, Private Banks and Trust Companies will be able to build portfolios and use them within the hour.

In addition:

• Advisers, Private Banks and Trust Companies can establish their own model portfolios or work with a DFM
• An unlimited number of portfolios can be established, for different risk profiles, for both Novia Global Products
• MPM provides the choice of updating some or all clients within a model by one simple instruction
• MPM has the functionality to synchronise all clients’ trades within a model portfolio. The single dealing point provides equality across clients

It is designed to answer the question ‘How has my money done?’ and can measure the success of switching strategies. The results can be particularly surprising when the review period is short, eg just a few months.

The calculation gives a true rate of return on the client’s money, taking into account investments and disinvestments. It considers the ‘Money Weighted’ rate of return which can be shown against a rate of return benchmark of the Adviser’s choice.  All charges are taken into account when calculating the client’s rate of return, including the fund charges, Novia’s charges and the Adviser’s charges.  For the benchmark portfolio only charges incurred at the time of investment of new money are included and the tool will not reflect the recurrent Adviser and Novia charges.