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Risk Profiler
The household's risk profile cards, one per person and per super or pension account; how the fourteen-question profile is scored, what an adviser override changes, how every assessment is kept, and where the recorded profile is read across the rest of Aether.
Updated 24 October 2026
What this screen is for
The Risk Profiler records an attitude to investment risk as a scored questionnaire, a resulting profile from Conservative to Growth, and a separate tolerance for illiquid investments. A profile belongs to one person, or to one of that person’s super or pension accounts, never to a household. An account is profiled on its own because its horizon and allocation are not the person’s: an accumulation account decades from retirement and a pension already paying can sensibly sit in different profiles.
The questionnaire has fourteen questions in four sections. Sections A (risk tolerance, six questions), B (knowledge and experience, three) and C (time horizon, three) produce the score. Section D (illiquidity tolerance, two questions) does not move the score at all; it produces its own figure. A person and an account answer the same questionnaire.
The page scores as you go so you can see an indicative result, but the score that is saved is computed again on the server from the answers you send. The page is handed the server’s questionnaire, points included, so the two use the same arithmetic on the same numbers.
The household’s cards
The page opens on the household in your active context, or asks you to choose one. Each member has a row of cards: their personal profile first, then one card for each super or pension account in their fact find. Each card says where that profile stands: On record, Not started, Carried over (a profile imported from another system), or Not yet linked. An account that is not yet linked has no fact-find id, so nothing can be kept against it until the fact find is saved. A card with a profile on record shows the profile on its band scale, the score, the date it was completed with its age (“3 weeks ago”), and how many assessments are kept for it.
No review period is applied: the card shows the age and leaves the judgement to you. The line above the cards counts the profiles in the household that have not been started.
If an account is removed from the fact find, its profiles are not lost. They are listed under “removed account with records kept” below that member’s cards, stamped Account removed and named as they were when they were saved, and can be viewed but not added to.
How the score is calculated
Each multiple-choice question carries a set of points, one per option, and the points differ by question. The two slider questions are bucketed instead.
| Slider | Answer | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum tolerable 12-month loss (A5) | up to 5% | 1 |
| 6% to 12% | 3 | |
| 13% to 22% | 6 | |
| 23% to 33% | 8 | |
| above 33% | 10 | |
| Years until the funds are needed (C1) | under 2 | 1 |
| 2 to 5 | 4 | |
| 6 to 10 | 8 | |
| 11 to 15 | 11 | |
| 16 or more | 12 |
The points from sections A, B and C are added (a minimum of 13 and a maximum of 101), divided by 101 and scaled to 100, rounded to the nearest whole number. That is the risk score shown out of 100, so the lowest answers score 13 and the highest score 100. The three dimension bars beside it are each section’s points as a share of that section’s maximum (52, 21 and 28).
The score lands in one of five bands, and each band carries the growth and defensive weighting that the Portfolio page and the advice document compare against.
| Score | Profile | Growth / defensive target |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 24 | Conservative | 20% / 80% |
| 25 to 44 | Moderately conservative | 35% / 65% |
| 45 to 64 | Balanced | 60% / 40% |
| 65 to 79 | Moderately aggressive | 75% / 25% |
| 80 to 100 | Growth | 90% / 10% |
The expected return range and maximum drawdown printed on the portfolio card are descriptions kept with the questionnaire.
An indicative profile appears once four scoring questions are answered. The progress line counts all fourteen, because all fourteen are needed to save.
Answering the sliders
A slider that has not been touched is not an answer. Its readout says “Not recorded yet” until you drag it or click it, and clicking records the value the slider is showing. That click matters for the two answers a drag cannot reach: a loss tolerance of 0% and an illiquid allocation of 0%, which both sit at the slider’s resting position.
Illiquidity tolerance
Section D produces a percentage of the portfolio the client could hold in investments that cannot be redeemed for five to ten years. It is the higher of the slider answer (D1) and the figure implied by the frozen-fund question (D2), where the four options stand for 0%, 15%, 30% and 45%.
The Portfolio page uses this figure as a ceiling on its liquidity ladder, applied to the least-liquid bucket (holdings that take two months or more to redeem), and says so beside the marker.
Adviser override
If you disagree with the scored result, choose a profile in the Adviser override box and write a reason. A reason is required whenever an override is chosen; the save is refused otherwise, and the refusal names the problem. The final profile recorded against the client is the override if there is one, and the scored profile if not. The scored profile and score are kept beside it either way.
A reason with no override is accepted and stored. You will meet that shape on clients whose profile came in through a migration: the importer writes the source system’s notes into the reason box, records no override, keeps the questionnaire blank and marks the assessment as migrated. Its card reads Carried over, and its record says the profile came from another system and shows the carried notes where an override reason would be.
Viewing, assessing and saving
View on a card opens that profile’s record. All profiles returns to the cards. The record is drawn by the server, and the same drawing is what prints and what downloads as a PDF, so the record on screen is the record on paper. It shows the score band, the dimension bars, the recorded portfolio with its allocation, the illiquidity tolerance, the override and its reason, the assessment number, and every question with the answer recorded. An account’s record names the account and its phase.
Beside the record is every assessment kept for that profile, newest first: the person’s own, or one account’s, never the two mixed. Each shows its profile, score, any override with its reason, the date, who completed it and its assessment number, with View record and PDF for that assessment. A later assessment never changes an earlier one.
New assessment opens a blank questionnaire for the profile. Start from the latest answers fills it with the answers last saved for this profile, override included, for you to change. On an account, when the person has a profile on record, Start from Alex’s latest answers (with the person’s first name) copies the person’s answers but not their override.
Save Risk Profile refuses an incomplete questionnaire and lists the unanswered question numbers. A complete one is scored on the server and kept as a new assessment. Saved for a person, it becomes their current profile. Saved for an account, it is kept against that account, named and phased as the account stood when it was saved, and changes nothing else: the person’s profile, and everything listed under “Where the profile is read” below, stay as they were. If the account has left the person’s fact find since the page was opened, the save is refused with “Super account not found” and nothing is kept. The completed date is today’s date in Sydney.
Reset Answers clears the form on screen, including the override, and nothing else. The saved profile is unchanged until you save again.
Print Profile prints the saved record of the profile open on screen, never the form. If the form holds unsaved changes the print asks first and the printed page carries a banner saying so. With no saved profile the button says so, and a browser print (Ctrl+P) prints a notice instead of a blank sheet. Record PDF downloads the same record. Blank PDF on a card, or Blank questionnaire PDF beside a profile, downloads the questionnaire unanswered and headed for that person or account, to print or send.
In client meeting mode the record leaves out the override reason and any carried-over notes, the assessment list is not shown, and the override box is not filled.
If a save fails, the message shows what the server said rather than a generic connection error.
Where the profile is read
Every surface below reads the person’s current profile. A super or pension account’s profile is read on this page only: it does not tick the compliance register, set the portfolio targets or appear in the advice document.
| Surface | What it reads |
|---|---|
| Client list | The final profile, shown against the client |
| Compliance register | “Risk profile completed” is ticked when a final profile exists. A client reads as ready for advice only when scope is set, the fact find is complete and a profile is recorded |
| Portfolio page | The final profile’s growth and defensive targets and the illiquidity tolerance, for the compliance card; with no profile the card links you here |
| Portfolio snapshot (a dated record of what the client actually holds) | The profile as it stood when the snapshot was taken is copied onto it, so re-profiling later does not restate an old comparison |
| Advice document | The “Risk Profile & Capacity Assessment” section, described below |
| Client portal | Clients see the profile only inside a published advice document; there is no client-facing questionnaire |
What the advice document says
The section is built from the recorded final profile. With no profile recorded the section is left out rather than defaulted.
Two things in that section do not come from the questionnaire. The five “dimension” bars (return expectations, time horizon, loss tolerance, investment knowledge, income stability) are derived arithmetically from the profile’s rank, not from the client’s answers, and they are omitted for a migrated profile because nobody scored those dimensions here. The capacity factors come from the fact find: an asset base above $500,000 reads as adequate, and a debt-to-asset ratio under 0.3 reads as manageable.
The assessment date is printed as recorded. No review period is applied anywhere in Aether: the document states the date and leaves the judgement about its age to you.