Robo-Advisors Editing and Proofreading Services

Question 7 of the risk questionnaire asks how the customer would feel if her portfolio fell 20 percent. She selects "uncomfortable, but I would hold," which is the answer a sensible person gives on a calm Tuesday morning. Fourteen months later the account is down 19 percent, she sells everything at nine in the evening, and the suitability file holds her prediction about a feeling she had never had. No advisor was in the room to ask why someone with three months of savings had chosen a high-risk portfolio, and none was there to explain the quarter.

The documents we edit for Robo-Advisors

Onboarding and suitability questionnaires arrive first, usually with the risk profiling questions and the outcome explanations attached. Portfolio recommendation and rationale screens, key information and cost disclosures, and terms of business and client agreements follow close behind. We also edit in-app education and glossary content, market volatility and drawdown communications, rebalancing and portfolio change notifications, and the flows for deposits, withdrawals, and account closure. Tax-advantaged account explanations and contribution limit guidance come to us as well, with customer service macros and escalation criteria. Marketing and acquisition copy and regulatory submissions covering the advice process are also part of this work. Our editors check that the answers on file can carry the recommendation the customer was given.

What the editing involves

Questions about circumstances give the file something it can rely on a year later. How long until the money is needed, what would happen if it were worth 20 percent less on that date, and what other savings are available all have answers that can be checked against a document. A question about how a fall would feel collects a guess about an emotion the customer has not yet had. We do not decide which questions the model needs or what weight any answer should carry. The firm and its compliance reviewers decide that, and the question set arrives with the copy.

Capacity for loss and attitude to risk read better as two recorded figures than as one blended score. A customer who could absorb a fall and dislikes the idea of one is a different record from a customer who could not absorb it and says she does not mind, and a single number hides which of the two is on file. Where two answers contradict each other, the screen should say so in plain words and ask again rather than averaging them out of sight. The recommendation should then be explained back in the customer's own answers, along the lines of: this portfolio follows from a date eleven years away and from the $8,000 you hold in cash elsewhere. A file written that way can still be read a year later, by a reviewer or by the customer herself.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including customer journeys, model documentation, and material still in draft. We are editors, not financial advisors or compliance professionals, and nothing we write is financial advice or an opinion on suitability. Your compliance function approves what reaches the customer. What we can do is keep the wording plain and inside what the process can actually support.