Traditional Financial Planning likes to categorise you, the client into boxes. Judging by the way you answer the Tick box questionaire your score is added and you are given a title. Here are the generalised "Titles" and what they really mean.

Generally speaking there are three or four main risk profiles including:

CONSERVATIVE - an investor who seeks to protect their accumulated wealth and only prepared to accept a relatively low level of risk.

BALANCED - an investor who seeks an investment that provides a mix of income and growth, should be stable in value over a 3-year period, but could fall in value by 5-10% within a year. Over the long term this strategy could provide a return of 6-8%.

GROWTH - an investor who seeks more growth than income with an overall investment portfolio that could provide growth of 8-10% over the long term. The flip side is that in any one year it could fall by as much as 20% in value.

HIGH GROWTH / AGGRESSIVE - an investor who predominantly seeks growth assets that could provide returns of greater than 10% over the long term. The flip side is that in any one year it could fall by greater than 20% in value.

In traditional Financial Planning, Your risk profile reflects your perception of the acceptable trade-off between risk and the reward required for bearing any investment risk. So hang on, what are you paying the Financial Planner for? Under the Traditionalist model, you tick the boxes, you get branded and the planner will go to their little box of goodies and use their "expertise" to pick product that their licensee has approved in conjunction with that risk profile.