Measure the risk you are willing and financially able to take

ᛒ Who it is for

Who should use Ballast

Individual investors

Use Ballast before choosing a risk level or long-term investing approach. The result shows whether emotional comfort with market losses matches the financial ability to absorb them. This gives the investor a clearer basis for discussing or selecting an appropriate level of risk.

Brokers, advisers and wealth managers

Use Ballast as the risk-profile component of client onboarding and periodic Know Your Client (KYC) review. The client completes a consistent assessment before or during the meeting. The professional can then review the separate measurements, investigate conflicting answers, discuss likely reactions to loss and retain a versioned result for the client record.

Practical benefits for wealth professionals

• A consistent risk-assessment process across clients and advisers
• Separate measures of risk tolerance and financial risk capacity instead of one opaque score
• Visible discrepancies and confidence signals that identify questions requiring discussion
• A plain-language result that can improve the client conversation about loss and trade-offs
• A versioned record that supports onboarding documentation and later reassessment

Ballast is not a complete KYC system and does not determine suitability. It does not perform identity or anti-money-laundering checks, collect every client fact a firm may require, recommend investments or replace the judgment and obligations of the firm and its registered professionals.

What Ballast measures

How the assessment works

1. Set the context. Choose a country, account context and an approximate portfolio amount. The amount is used to show gains and losses in dollars.
2. Answer short questions about finances, time horizon, knowledge, concentration and past reactions to markets.
3. Make choices in interactive exercises. These include 50/50 gambles, loss-aversion choices and a simulated falling market that records the point at which the user first chooses to reduce risk.
4. Receive the result. A risk band, eight separate measurements, a confidence level and explanations of the trade-offs and likely behaviour associated with the result.

What the user gets

• One of six risk bands: Defensive, Cautious, Balanced, Growth, Aggressive or Speculative
• Eight separate scores with plain-language explanations
• A confidence signal when the answers and exercises disagree
• Flags for important patterns such as strong loss aversion or near-term cash pressure
• A description of likely mistakes, suitable behavioural patterns and the trade-offs of the result
• A downloadable profile that can be kept without creating an account