To enrich the financial lives of investors, Orion Advisor Solutions, a leading provider of transformative wealthtech solutions for fiduciary advisors, combines its best-in-class advisor technology with behavioral finance to bring goals-based investing to Orion Planning. Orion’s goals-based investing approach, called Protect, Live, Dream, uses mental accounting to help clients achieve a sense of calm and security while simultaneously striving to reach their dreams.
“We believe a seamless, embedded approach to goals-based investing can improve people’s investment experience, increase returns formerly sacrificed to misbehavior, and allow investors to worry less about ‘the economy’ as they become increasingly focused on ‘my economy’,” said Dr. Daniel Crosby, Chief Behavioral Officer at Orion. “In creating Protect, Live, Dream, we aimed to provide advisors with a tool that helps keep their clients calm during market volatility, improves their client’s financial outcomes, and, ultimately, guides their clients to better financial planning habits.”
In a study conducted during the 2008 financial crisis, 65% of individuals surveyed who had a goals-based approach made no changes to their portfolios, while 50% of those with a traditional financial plan decided to fully liquidate their portfolios. The study showed that “goals-based investors are less likely to panic and make ill-informed changes to their portfolios.”
A client’s financial life is a complicated mix of future dreams, present realities, and potential negative outcomes. By bucketing investments into distinct areas, advisors can help their clients work toward unique goals, not arbitrary benchmarks. Orion’s Protect, Live, Dream approach provides customizable numbers and names of tranches, allowing clients to join advisors in crafting a personalized plan that better serves their short- and long-term financial goals.
- The Protect bucket consists of not only ‘safe’ assets, but also the income potential of human capital.
- The Live bucket contains those investment assets that work to sustain an individual’s lifestyle.
- And, the Dream bucket funds aspirations, or things investors want to do in the future but are not immediate needs.
The buckets help investors focus on a goals-based approach that accounts for their individual motivations and risk tolerance while minimizing reactivity to factors such as market volatility. Additionally, Protect, Live, Dream aligns a client’s mental accounts with asset allocation and utilizes their natural tendency to be aspirational to increase the likelihood of being satisfied with their financial plan.
“The idea that being intentional about how we account for and mentally subdivide our money can positively impact our behavior is brought to life in a tech-enabled way through Protect, Live, Dream,” said Eric Clarke, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Orion.
“By understanding the human side of investing, Protect, Live, Dream helps advisors create improved outcomes for their clients by instilling better saving habits with an intuitive, easy-to-understand approach. It puts advisors on the forefront of technology by offering clients a new way of investing; and the adaptable solution allows advisors to easily roll out the offering to their clients.”
The Protect, Live, Dream approach is integrated into Orion Planning, which is available to Orion clients at no additional cost.
To learn more about Orion Planning and the Protect, Live, Dream approach, register HERE for a May 10 webinar.
About Orion Advisor Solutions
Orion is a premier provider of the tech-enabled fiduciary process that transforms the advisor-client relationship by enabling financial advisors to Prospect, Plan, Invest, and Achieve within a single, connected, technology-driven experience. Combined, our brand entities, Orion Advisor Tech, Orion Portfolio Solutions, Brinker Capital Investments, HiddenLevers, and BasisCode create a complete offering that empowers firms to attract new clients seamlessly; connect goals more meaningfully to investment strategies and outcomes, and ultimately track progress toward each investor’s unique definition of financial success. As a result, Orion supports more than 2,300 independent advisory firms with $1.9 trillion in assets under administration and $60 billion of wealth management platform assets (as of March 31, 2022), making Orion the platform of choice for all growth-focused advisory firms looking to strengthen their client relationships, gain a competitive edge in a crowded marketplace, and build strong, profitable businesses. Learn more HERE.
