Oxford Risk, the behavioural finance technology firm, has launched new Personalisation and Cash Deployment features in its award-winning Investor Compass Risk Suitability Solution, giving advisers the tools to help clients get invested and stay invested.
A suitable portfolio only works if the money actually goes into it. Yet, even in the advised channel, prospects hesitate to commit and existing clients sit on excess cash.
The launch comes as getting savers out of cash and into investments has become a UK policy priority, with cash ISA reform, the government’s push to encourage retail investing, and the FCA’s new Targeted Support regime all aimed at closing the gap between saving and investing.
Finding the Right Portfolio is Only Half the Job.
Getting suitability right matters. In Oxford Risk’s modelling, moving a £100,000 portfolio just one risk level, from Medium-Low to Medium, adds around £74,000 after 30 years. But the right portfolio only pays off if people are invested in it. Oxford Risk estimates that investors lose, on average, 300bps of returns each year to the need for emotional comfort, and remaining uninvested is often the largest part of that cost.
Investor suitability tools have traditionally stopped at the recommendation: they establish which portfolio fits an investor, then leave the hardest step, actually committing the money, to the investor. For many, the barrier is not a lack of knowledge about products or how investing works. It is behavioural: worry about investing at the wrong moment, fear of regret, the comfort of cash, and the ease of putting the decision off for another day.
The barrier is also personal. One person worries about timing. Another needs more reassurance before committing. Another finds the decision itself uncomfortable and keeps deferring it. Giving them more information adds more of what they already have. What moves them is help that reflects how they, as individuals, make decisions.
James Pereira-Stubbs, Chief Client Officer at Oxford Risk, comments:
“Most of the industry’s tools are built to answer one question: what is the right portfolio for this person’s stated risk tolerance? That matters, but it’s incomplete. A suitable portfolio has to reflect a holistic view of an individual’s financial circumstances, knowledge and experience. Even then, it does nothing to help the adviser move from the right portfolio to actually getting the person to make that commitment. We’re the first to give firms a way to understand what’s holding each individual back and to help them past it. They don’t just end up with the right portfolio. They get invested, and they remain invested for the long term.”
Personalisation and Cash Deployment, Built in
The new Personalisation feature matches every assessed investor to one of 10 investor personas, built from Oxford Risk’s research across 16 Financial Personality dimensions, including Composure, Impulsivity, Decision Support and Financial Comfort. Advisers can see where each client sits on each trait.
The Cash Deployment feature turns that insight into action. It provides a behavioural nudge tailored to the investor’s personality, suggesting how and when to frame the conversation so that surplus cash is put to work. An investor low in Composure may need a different approach from one who wants more guidance, or one prone to acting on impulse. The intervention meets each investor where they are.
Because the interventions sit within Investor Compass’s Suitable Risk assessment, the cash is deployed into a portfolio matched to the investor’s full financial position and behavioural capacity, at a level they can sustain through a downturn.
The behavioural engine behind these features is already well established. For many years, Oxford Risk’s underlying APIs have powered digital journeys and Targeted Support for firms reaching customers at scale. With this release, the same capability is now available directly within the Investor Compass web app.
