Tools
How much risk can you actually live with?
About 15 questions, one at a time, with a few more if your answers need clarifying. They measure whether a fall would change your life, how you respond to one, what you know and have held, and what the money needs to earn. Your preliminary assessment opens on its own page.
Before we start
Preliminary assessment only. Not a suitability assessment and not a personal recommendation. Your answers stay in this browser tab. Press 1 to 5 to choose an answer.
How to read it
Risk is what you can hold, not what you can imagine.
Most people overstate their tolerance in a calm year and discover it in a bad one. The capacity questions are about circumstances: if a specified fall would force you to sell or change your plans, no amount of nerve makes a high-risk portfolio suitable. The tolerance questions are about how you respond to a fall, in prospect and, if you have been through one, in practice. Knowledge and experience are assessed separately and shape how we implement, not how much risk you take.
What happens next
- In the first conversation we complete the formal suitability assessment required for the regulated entity and service applicable to you, reconcile anything that conflicts, and record it.
- The agreed profile sets the allocation ranges in your mandate and the benchmark we report against.
- It is reviewed every year and after any major change in your life.
Methodology
How the assessment is built, and what it cannot do.
Who sets what. The questions and safeguards follow the regulators' guidance on assessing suitability: separate treatment of capacity for loss, tolerance, and knowledge and experience; specified rather than vague loss scenarios; checks for inconsistent answers; and the ability to return no profile. The scoring, thresholds and the mapping from profile to portfolio are Intrasia Wealth's own methodology, set and validated by our investment committee, and are not a regulatory formula.
Scoring. Five capacity questions and five tolerance questions each score 1 to 4, giving two totals out of 20, banded as Conservative (5–8), Cautious (9–11), Balanced (12–14), Growth (15–17) and Adventurous (18–20). If you have never held investments that fell, that tolerance question is left out and the remaining four are scaled to 20. Three knowledge-and-experience questions, on understanding, the products you have held and for how long, give a separate level, Limited to Extensive, that is not added to either score. How often you trade is recorded but not scored: activity is not evidence of knowledge.
Ceiling and willingness. Capacity sets a ceiling; tolerance decides within it. A tolerance band above the ceiling produces the ceiling profile and a note to discuss. This is our policy; an adviser can review it and document a different conclusion.
Capacity gates and review triggers. Money needed within three years for an essential purpose stops the assessment at capital preservation and adviser review, with no profile named. Money needed within three years for another purpose caps the ceiling at Conservative. Answering that a 20% fall lasting three years would force you to change your plans caps it at Cautious. Saying you would be very uncomfortable seeing a material loss caps it at Conservative, because no portfolio with equities or bonds can promise otherwise. Almost all of your wealth combined with uncertain income, or regular withdrawals with little in reserve, trigger a review note without changing the profile. Every gate names the answer that triggered it.
Consistency and cross-checks. If two tolerance answers are three or more points apart, the assessment asks which is closer to what you would do and uses the answer you confirm for both. It also checks your purpose against your horizon, withdrawals against purpose, required return against horizon, and discomfort with loss against required return; for each, you can change an answer or confirm that both are true and discuss it with an adviser. After every clarification the checks run again, so a second contradiction is caught, up to eight in total. Every clarification is recorded on the result. Nothing is changed silently.
Goal feasibility. The return you say the money needs is compared with what each profile typically aims for over a full market cycle, after fees and before tax: keeping pace with inflation for Conservative, inflation plus 1–2% for Cautious, plus 3–4% for Balanced, and more than that for Growth and Adventurous. A goal that needs more than the profile aims for is flagged for discussion, not resolved by adding risk. Where no profile is produced, the result says so explicitly if the required return, timeframe and capacity cannot be reconciled. These ranges are illustrative and subject to investment committee validation.
Illustrative declines. The result shows what a specified percentage decline would mean for the amount you entered, or in percentages if you entered none: 5% for Conservative, 8% for Cautious, 15% for Balanced, 20% for Growth and 30% for Adventurous. These are scenarios chosen for illustration, not forecasts or maximum losses; larger falls are possible, and every profile, including Conservative, can lose money over a three-year period. The scenarios and the illustrative asset mixes are to be tied to the firm's actual strategic portfolios, including their volatility, drawdown and liquidity, once the investment committee has validated the mapping.
The five profiles. For reference, not comparison: the assessment is set by circumstances and comfort, not chosen.
| Profile | Score band | Illustrative equities / bonds / cash | Illustrative decline | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 5–8 | 20% / 55% / 25% | 5% | A lower-risk diversified portfolio intended to limit, but not prevent, fluctuations. It can still lose money, including over a three-year period. |
| Cautious | 9–11 | 35% / 50% / 15% | 8% | Some growth is needed but a large fall would hurt. A moderate equity weight, with bonds intended to reduce, not remove, the swings. |
| Balanced | 12–14 | 55% / 35% / 10% | 15% | The classic long-term mix. Equities do the growing; bonds are intended to reduce, not remove, the swings in the worst years. |
| Growth | 15–17 | 75% / 20% / 5% | 20% | A long horizon and the capacity to sit through a substantial fall without changing plans. Higher expected returns, bigger swings, patience required. |
| Adventurous | 18–20 | 90% / 5% / 5% | 30% | Almost fully in equities. Suited to a very long horizon, secure income and real experience of volatility. |
Record. Each result carries an opaque result ID, the date, the assessment, scoring and mapping versions, and the regulated entity for your place of residence, or a note that the entity is to be confirmed if you live outside Mauritius and South Africa. Your answers are not encoded in the link, your browser history or any email; they stay in this browser tab unless you choose to send them to us. The printed result includes space for the adviser to record how any mismatch, inconsistency or override was resolved.
What it cannot do. It cannot assess suitability, which needs the full picture of your circumstances and a conversation. It profiles one pot of money for one purpose at a time. It does not ask about sustainability preferences, because we only ask what our advice process can act on. It is a preliminary assessment and not a personal recommendation.
Questions we are asked
Frequently asked
Is this the risk assessment you do with clients?
Why are capacity and tolerance scored separately?
Why are knowledge and experience shown separately and not scored into the profile?
Why are the losses shown in money rather than percentages?
What happens if my answers contradict each other?
Why might it not give me a profile at all?
Can my profile change?
Turn a preliminary assessment into a mandate.
Bring your result to a 30-minute conversation and we will do the formal assessment together.