How do professional advisors make trade-offs between conflicting attributes of a client when determining a suitable or "best interest" profile for them? Risk tolerance, risk capacity, loss aversion, composure, knowledge, experience, time horizon, need, liquidity and more may play a role. Initial research found a startling lack of consistency between professional advisors as to what factors are important and how they behave relative to each other. Only time horizon for investing is universally recognized but even then a wide variance in opinion leads to very different assessments of its impact for clients. This paper utilizes a combination of two methods of inquiry, surveys of advisors using binary decisions to try and determine if any consistency or consensus exists, and secondly, in depth interviews of 8 "recognized experts" in the field. The outcome is to document any common heuristics that advisor should consider as a best practice.
