Battling regulation: Is compliance pushing clients to lower risk investments?

Risk questionnaires are an important tool in ascertaining how cautious a client should be, but the plethora of approaches available to advisers show how complicated the topic is.  Ricky Chan, a Chartered financial planner at IFS Wealth and Pensions, normally does not ask his clients to fill out the questionnaire until he is sure they would benefit from advice.  He believes many advisers focus too heavily on risk tolerance without considering what is driving a client to invest in the first place. "We don't build a risk profile until we understand there is a need to build or assess an...