客户风险评估的重要性

J.B. Maverick  2016年8月29日

风险和回报是分析任何投资都需要考虑的两个基本因素。所有投资者都希望从他们的投资中获得尽可能高的回报。然而，潜在回报必须和潜在风险平衡。为客户投资进行适当的分析时，金融顾问或者资产经理必须为每个客户创建准确的风险评估。风险评估使金融顾问能确定对每个投资者最适合的投资。

金融风险评估的要素

每个风险评估都涉及几个关键因素，这些因素可以一起构成一个广泛的综合分析，分析中包含客户面临的风险和能最大化降低风险的投资。

风险评估中的第一个因素是风险承受容量，这是一个人当前财政情况允许其能承担风险的最大水平。风险评估的这一部分是客户能承担损失的最大限额，无论损失的规模大小。风险承受容量还能使顾问了解客户的投资组合将怎样运作和当一个投资出现亏损或者盈利时变化的额度。

风险评估的第二个因素是风险需求。每个客户与顾问讨论他们的投资目标，顾问则确定能达到客户心中投资回报目标所需要承担的风险。之后顾问需要确定客户需要承受多大的风险以帮助客户成功的实现投资目标。

风险评估的心理部分

在不严格的金融概念中风险评估包含上两个组成部分，但是从心理概念来说还包含更多的因素。其中一个概念是对待风险的态度。本质上，对待风险的态度是客户对必须承担风险与这些风险对其生活和财政产生怎样影响的理解。通常，一个金融顾问通过确定客户对风险的态度做出进一步的风险评估，在确定客户的风险承受力和风险需求之后对客户对待风险的态度做进一步的评估。

风险承受力也是每个风险评估中的关键因素。有时会被与风险容量混淆，风险承受力的区别在于它是客户对投资风险水平和长短期可能风险的心理以及情感承受能力。通常，风险承受能力与之前的投资经验高度相关。一些客户的风险承受力为零。他们不能应对任何形式的投资损失，即使是临时的也不行，无论潜在回报有多大。对于这些客户，唯一合适的投资时提供确定回报率和无风险的固定收益投资，例如国债。

总结

对于需要做出准确风险和有效风险评估的金融顾问来说，他必须确定和评估上述因素并进行相互比较，然后为客户做出一个明智的组合风险水平。完成风险评估使金融顾问能确定适合客户的一般资产类别和特殊资产类别。风险承受力和风险容量都是和潜在回报相对的，金融顾问必须确定他们的客户能了解这一点。

The Importance of a Client's Risk Assessment

By J.B. Maverick | August 29, 2016 — 1:00 PM EDT

Risk and return are two fundamental factors that must be considered in analyzing any investment. All investors want to make the highest possible return from their investments. However, potential return must always be balanced against potential risk. To analyze investments for individual clients properly, a financial advisor or money manager must create an accurate risk assessment, or risk profile, for each client. This risk assessment allows an advisor to determine the most suitable investments for each client to consider.

The Financial Elements of a Risk Assessment

Every risk assessment involves several key elements that can be used together to make up a broadly comprehensive analysis of the risk a client faces and the investments that best mitigate that risk or make the risk worthwhile.

The first element of a risk assessment is risk capacity, the maximum level of risk that an individual can afford to take based on his or her financial circumstances. This portion of the risk assessment is a quantification of the client's total ability to absorb a loss, whether the loss is small, moderate or large. The capacity for risk also provides the advisor with an understanding of how the client's portfolio will function and the rate of change financially if a specific investment results in either a loss or a gain.

The second element of a risk assessment is risk requirement. Each client discusses his or her investment objectives with the advisor, and each advisor understands that a certain amount of risk is necessary to meet the investment return objectives that the client has in mind. The advisor then must determine what calculated investment risks must be taken to assist the client with meeting his or her investment goals successfully.

The Psychological Components of Risk Assessment

There are two key elements of a risk assessment that are not strictly financial concepts, but are more in the realm of psychological concepts. One such concept is the attitude to risk. Essentially, the attitude to risk is the client's understanding of risk in terms of what it entails and how it will affect the client's life and finances. Typically, a financial advisor further develops a risk assessment by determining the client's attitude toward risk at the outset, then reassessing the client's risk attitude after determining the client's risk capacity and risk requirements.

Risk tolerance is also a key psychological element of every risk assessment. Sometimes confused with risk capacity, risk tolerance differs in that it is the client's mental and emotional ability to tolerate chances taken on investments, given the level of risk, and how psychologically capable the client is at handling losses or overall volatility in both the short term and long term. Frequently, tolerance for risk highly correlates with previous investment experiences. Some clients have zero risk tolerance. They cannot deal with any sort of investment loss, not even a temporary one, no matter what the potential investment return is. For such clients, the only appropriate investments are fixed-income investments that provide a guaranteed rate of return and virtually no risk, such as U.S. Treasury bonds.

The Bottom Line

For a financial advisor to develop an accurate and effective risk assessment or profile, he or she must determine and assess each of the above-mentioned characteristics independently in order to compare them to each other and then combine them into a sensible investment risk level for a given client. Completing a risk assessment enables a financial advisor to determine general classes of assets and specific types of investments that are most appropriate for a given client. Both risk tolerance and risk capacity are constraints on potential investment returns, and advisors must make sure that their clients understand this fact.

本文翻译由兄弟财经提供

文章来源：http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing-strategy/082916/importance-clients-risk-assessment.asp