How to Boost Engagement with Financial Planning Clients

We are excited to introduce RightRisk, a new risk assessment tool that's fully integrated into RightCapital's financial planning software. With RightRisk, it's easier than ever to show how a risk tolerance score relates to investment portfolios and the probability of success. Let's dive in.

In the client portal, under Investment, you'll find a new Risk tab. The Summary tab comes with three charts. The first chart, the risk summary, shows how the household risk score compares to their current and target portfolios. For your convenience, you can update the target portfolio using the dropdown menu. Here, you can also exclude any investment accounts from the analysis by just opening up the action items, clicking edit, and unchecking those specific accounts.

The risk comparison chart shows the household risk score along with other major asset classes like money market, corporate bonds, and large growth funds. The household risk classification is an optional chart that shows where the risk score falls within the customized risk categories created by the advisor. In this example, we're showing high, medium, and low, but I'll show you where you can customize them later in the advisor portal.

Let's jump to the analysis tab. You can use this visual to help clients understand the potential upside and downside for their current and target investment portfolios and how they compare to other major asset classes.

From the score and assessments tab, you as the advisor can set the risk score for your client household by clicking the set risk score button. As you move the cursor across the scale, you'll see the list of your model portfolios that fall within a 10-point range of that score. For this particular household, let's assume the risk score of 70 based on the assessments the client has taken previously and the conversations I've had with them.

Let's also go ahead and assign a new risk questionnaire to this client. By default, we include a 13-item questionnaire based on the Grable and Lytton scale, a well-known industry standard, but you can also create your own questionnaire, which we'll go over later in the advisor portal. You can click the start button to launch the questionnaire immediately and review it with the client during a live meeting, or you can press the save button, which will show a splash screen the next time the client logs into the portal reminding them to take the questionnaire.

Lastly, the details tab displays the household's investment accounts and their account specific risk scores, which are calculated based on their standard deviation.

Now let's switch to the advisor portal, where you'll also see the new Risk tab. On the Household tab, you can see the roundup of the risk scores for all your client households and their current portfolios in one place. The Portfolio tab provides a detailed view of the advisor's model portfolios, including their expected return, standard deviation, potential downside and upside, and where they fall within the custom risk categories that you've created.

On the Questionnaires tab, you can edit the default Grable and Lytton questionnaire we provided or add a new questionnaire. Let's go ahead and create a sample questionnaire together. After you've applied a risk value to all the responses, they will be automatically normalized on a scale of one to 100. Once you're done editing the questionnaire, don't forget to press the publish button.

The Categories tab is an optional feature where you can create your own risk categories and ranges to display in your client's risk analysis. To enable or disable this feature, toggle the enable button. By default, we've added low, medium, and high categories, but you can create a new risk category and range by clicking on the risk scale.

Now, let's talk about other ways to share RightRisk with clients. You can of course add the household risk score and risk summary to the Snapshot dashboard and also include them as part of the PDF report.

You might be wondering if there's a cost associated with RightRisk. If you're already on our premium subscription or higher, RightRisk is included for free.

Thank you for joining us for our overview of the new RightRisk module, and please let us know what you think.

Dashboard > Tasks is where we can start to boost client engagement, and where we can start to assign Tasks to the client, the co-client, or ourselves. So let's start to do so by clicking on the Add Task button. From this dropdown, we can choose to add a single task, or if we have a task template already prebuilt for us — we can create that in the advisor portal — but also assign it directly from here as well. For now, we're going to walk through assigning a single task.

From here, we'd indicate the due date for this task. Right now it's set for a month from now. We can also assign the frequency, whether this should be a recurring task — monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual — or just a one-time task. For example, let's say this is going to be our monthly task.

And then we would just choose who we're going to assign this to, whether it's the client, co-client, or ourselves as the advisors. In this case, it's going to be the client and co-client, so we're going to select them from the list. Then we can mark the priority of this task, whether it's high priority, low priority, or if there's no particular priority.

And then you also have the option to mark this as whether or not it should be visible to the client or not shared with the client. If this is going to be an internally facing task for ourselves as advisors, we can mark this as not shared with the client. What this means is that when the client logs in and accesses the Tasks module, if we have them granted access to this, they would not see this task. But this is going to be client-facing, so we're going to keep that marked as shared with client.

And this is going to be our monthly task to review the Profile > Net Worth and make any adjustments as needed.

So we can add that. And as we start to add Tasks, this is going to open up the board view of the Tasks. We're also going to walk through adding a task template as well. So if we wanted to also include one of the "starting the year off RightCapital" checklists that I have curated, we can hit the save button and incorporate that particular template right here.

When navigating throughout the different modules of RightCapital, throughout each of those different fields — same thing with Profile as well — you will notice the opportunity to add Notes. If we click on the Notes button, this is where we can start to have that open line of communication with the client via the Notes.

If we click on the Add Note button from here, we can start to add that client-facing note as needed. So we want to talk about — maybe this is going to be when we have that client conversation — talk about our needs when retiring earlier. If we needed more information, we can have that note here, but we can also leave a note here in terms of what we're going to be changing in our particular plan.

So we can make that little note here. And this is going to be relevant, especially if we have the client invited to access the Retirement Analysis. Especially if we wanted to paint the picture for the client and have that little bit of the more personal touch from your relationship standpoint, you can add that note. So when the client's clicking through the modules — and what you have indicated via the planning access tab — they can see your client-facing notes at the bottom of this particular module, or any module in which you leave Notes. And that can provide that context, that idea of what we're evaluating here. It can be used for a multitude of different purposes.

Another purpose of the Notes themselves is that you can also add a note that is purely internally facing. To do so, we can click on the Add Note button. We can then mark this note as not shared with the client via the "eye" icon. And from here we can have that purely internally facing note, whether we wanted to note that we reviewed this at a certain time. Maybe it's just some key things that we want to keep in mind when curating our proposals, or anything along those lines.

So we're going to note that we're going to review this on May 10th, just for our internal note, to keep that in the back of our heads. Maybe we want to also make an adjustment and assign a Task for ourselves to modify this before May 10th. But it's a great way of having that internally facing note. And when the client's navigating throughout the software, if we've invited them to this particular selection, they will not see that internally facing note, or the one that's marked not shared with the client.

The same thing is true if we have a PDF report. If we download a PDF report of the Retirement Analysis, for example, that will not include any Notes that are marked as not client-facing. So if they're not shared with the client, we will not have those visible there either.

So starting in the Profile section, under Blueprint here. Under Profile > Blueprint is where we're going to see one of the first easy-to-digest visuals that can be an interactive space for a client, especially if we have them invited to RightCapital.

The Blueprint module is going to be focusing on the current plan, and it can be that great key visual of all of that initial six steps of data entry, and also a way to make adjustments to the current plan as needed. Starting with the Net Worth, for example, all the way to Goals, to Income, Savings, and Expenses. Of course, what the client can interact with here in the profile is dependent upon our selections in terms of what they can access and what they can make changes to.

But the Blueprint can also be that space to check in and see that nice visual in terms of what our net worth is, who owns what. If we needed to make adjustments to any of these existing accounts, the key interactive piece here is that we can click into any of these to make adjustments as needed. So for example, if we need to make an adjustment to the brokerage account, we can click on that card, make the adjustments to the total balance, hit save, and that's now incorporated as part of their plan. So it's a great way to have that nice, easy-to-navigate interactive space for the client.

Same thing under Goals, where we can see that life map for the goals of the client plan. Starting with that vacation goal next year, we have their child's college goal coming up, we have them retiring in our current plan at 67 and 70 respectively, and we have some of those other key expenses, or goals.

And under Income, Savings, and Expenses, we can see that summary in terms of current income, savings, and expenses. So maybe it's the beginning of the year, if we have any adjustments to the salary — hopefully they got a raise — you can easily click into the particular card itself to make that adjustment.

Under Dashboard > Snapshot, this is one of those unique spaces in RightCapital, as it pulls a lot of invaluable information across the various modules of RightCapital all into one space.

We can address a lot of those high-level things. It's also a great way to be selective—whether it's a PDF report, or if we're inviting a client to RightCapital and we want it to focus on only a couple of tabs. The Snapshot is a great way to focus on just a couple of those key visual aspects found throughout the different modules of RightCapital, looking at things like the probability of success, their liquidity analysis, and the tax allocation summary.

One of the key things here is that instead of normal notes, we're going to be using text boxes. For the Snapshot, you can leverage text boxes. It's a slightly different format than our notes.

The text box can be used for a multitude of things, whether it's the note for the client or the action items for the client. We can change that header by clicking on the title, making that adjustment to the header, and hitting save. Now this is going to be our action items for the client, if we have granted access to this. We can also include that calendar link so they can easily book time directly on the calendar if desired.

You can fully customize what's included here—if you wanted to add additional text boxes, whether full size, half size, or double size. Especially if you're talking about a more complex topic, and maybe you wanted to leave them in-depth notes about their proposed path, or just resources, the text box in the Snapshot feature is a great way to have that information located here.

Within the retirement module of the client plan, under Cash Flows, there is a nice, easy-to-digest visual that can assist in painting the picture for the client in terms of where their money is coming from, what they're spending it on, and what is being saved.

That can be found within the Maps section. Here under Maps, we're greeted with our Waterfall visual, which shows where our money's coming from, what expenses, tax payments, and savings contributions we're making, and what's happening with any excess cash flow.

This targets a specific year of the cash flow of whichever plan we have selected from this dropdown. We can also toggle to a different year. So if there's a particular year that's going to be an impactful year for their client plan—maybe they have questions about their retirement year in 2037—we can use the slider feature to toggle to 2037. From there, we can see what is happening with our inflows and where that's flowing to in that particular year.

It's a great way to have that easy-to-understand conversation about where our money's coming from, what we are saving into, and what's going on at the end of the year.

We can change the visual format. So if we prefer a different aesthetic, and maybe the client resonates with a different formatting of cash flows, you have the option to view the Breakdown. Under Breakdown, we can see that similar information in terms of where our money's coming from. We can click on any of these dropdowns to view additional insights and where it's flowing into.

For them, they are going to be selling their primary home, so that's an important aspect of their life. When they retire, they're going to be downsizing, so we see those proceeds coming in, and we see those outflows—including the down payment they're making for their new home at retirement—and what's happening for this particular year as well.

It's a great way to have an easy conversation, with a nice, easy-to-interact-with visual of their money and where it's coming from and where it's going.