HiddenLevers

The most impactful components of Hidden Levers are the risk tolerance workflow, stress testing, and integrations with our other software. The risk tolerance questionnaire takes a simple questionnaire to see their risk tolerance next to the risk profile. The financial planning tool and the recommendation section allows the advisor to guide the conversation toward a solution that fits their risk tolerance but also addresses the risk required to reach their goals. Stress testing has been especially useful in putting clients at ease during these past turbulent months, allowing them to see potential scenarios and how their portfolio might perform in the best, bad, and worse cases. Integrations with our performance and financial planning software allows us to easily bring in live data in for clients, saving time and effort in maintaining consistency across platforms.

I feel that the financial planning piece in the risk tolerance workflow is the weakest piece. I am more likely to use my financial planning software for running Monte Carlo situations than Hidden Levers because of the limited functionality and inability to look at multiple scenarios easily. Most data entry is intuitive but there are still a few places where it takes quite a bit of time to get used to the layout of the system, specifically for entering holdings data and within the financial planning area.

I like a lot of it's functionality, especially the ease of use in creating and analyzing portfolios. We also as a firm like Hidden Lever's risk analysis questionnaire. Householding is easy and the functionality is mostly there.

Definitely the visual imagery used in the software. The reports are alright, and they get the job done, but they are also relatively unprofessional compared to some other reporting software I've seen. But the website itself is just childish in many ways. I don't like the thumbnail icons and a lot of it just looks goofy.

Typically, I utilize HiddenLevers to analyze the existing portfolio vs. the proposed managed strategy. I like that it shows both risk and reward. These are two elements that I try to consistently teach clients about. I think HiddenLevers does a really good job illustrating that taking 10% more risk equates to 1-2% more reward with about the same difference on the downside.

Sometimes it's difficult to select households and show the breakdown of the allocation. I love using HL to show the allocation breakdown, because it gives me all the information I need to properly explain the portfolio and teach my clients about the overall and underlying investments.

The product is quite intuitive and easy to explain to potential users with a clean and appealing UI. Layering the data allows for a simple, surface-level view for clients but provides the flexibility for advisors to drill down into the information much further. It provides a clear picture of what is happening/could potentially happen and allows for meaningful interaction with various levers on the scenarios screen.

I would say that the area in greatest need of growth is with integrations. Of all the feedback I get, that is perhaps the most frequent response. It integrates well with Orion, but needs to create more robust connections to other products (Redtail, Advizr, etc).