Cetera Advisory

Elevating the Advisory Experience for Financial Advisors

We turned fragmented workflows into a more connected, goal-driven advisory experience.

  • User Testing

    To get decisive, actionable findings, we let users explore without artificial restrictions. We design our prototypes to accommodate this need, as a final product would.

  • Design Thinking

    Infuse empathy with an iterative approach that places the needs and perspectives of the users at the forefront of the design process.

  • Journey Maps

    The path of an experience is seldom a straight one, especially when looking to improve your user experience. Mapping that journey is a powerful way to begin.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals and best practices to find that “special sauce” that drives an actionable roadmap for your future experience.

  • Prototypes

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Bringing the user experience to life with a fully-interactive artifact is a low-cost, high-value way to iterate without the investment of code.

  • Responsive Design

    We design for the future on today’s devices. Every element is considered for every size display to create an ideal experience for all users.

  • Visual Design

    Through imagery, messaging, color and typography, we deliberate over pixels, consistency, readability, contrast, accessibility and creativity.

  • In-Depth Interviews

    Climb inside the world of the user with structured interviews that bring their unique voices into the design process.

  • Competitive Analysis

    See where you shine, where you don’t, and how to leverage that intel to fill the most important gaps in your experience.

  • Alignment Workshops

    Bring stakeholders together through structured, facilitated sessions that establish priorities and strategies for a path forward.

The Challenge

As Advisory services became an increasingly strategic part of Cetera’s business, the organization wanted to evolve the digital experience that supports advisors and their clients around this product line.

However, the Advisory business spans multiple systems, workflows, and conversations between advisors and clients. Critical elements such as risk tolerance assessment, goal identification, proposal generation, and client communication often happen in fragmented ways or rely on third-party tools.

Cetera wanted to answer several key questions:

  • How do advisors currently approach advisory conversations with clients?
  • What information do advisors need to collect to deliver better advice?
  • How could AdviceWorks evolve to better support the advisory workflow?
  • What new experiences could differentiate Cetera’s advisory offering?

To address these questions, Cetera partnered with ZeroDegrees to research advisor needs, envision the future advisory experience, and begin designing key components of that experience.

Image collage of advisors that were intereviewed
In-depth interviews with advisors of all kinds

Our Approach

ZeroDegrees conducted a multi-phase engagement that combined user research, collaborative product strategy, and experience design.

1. Advisor Research

The project began with qualitative research involving 20+ financial advisors across multiple Cetera broker-dealer communities. The goal was to understand how advisors currently approach risk discussions, goal planning, and proposal conversations with clients.

The research explored:

  • How advisors explain risk tolerance to clients
  • How client goals influence investment strategy
  • Friction in current risk questionnaire tools
  • Opportunities for better digital support in the advisory workflow

These conversations revealed important themes. Advisors emphasized the importance of linking risk tolerance to specific client goals, rather than asking risk questions in isolation. They also expressed interest in more intuitive, client-friendly digital tools to support these conversations.

Image of an experience map
Experience map with How-Might-We challenge statements for the workshop

2. Strategy Workshop & Visioning

With research insights in hand, ZeroDegrees facilitated a multi-day design thinking workshop with stakeholders across Cetera product, strategy, and operations teams.

The workshop focused on answering several “How Might We…” questions about the future advisory experience, including:

  • How might we help advisors collect meaningful client data before the first meeting?
  • How might we use risk and goal data across multiple parts of the platform?
  • How might we create more compelling and personalized proposals for clients?

Participants generated and prioritized dozens of ideas spanning client engagement, advisor workflows, and platform capabilities.

Several themes emerged as particularly important:

  • Interactive risk and goal discovery tools
  • Stronger integration of advisory data across AdviceWorks
  • Goal-oriented investment proposals
  • Personalization tools for advisors
  • Educational content and insights to support client conversations

The workshop also helped identify foundational capabilities and a roadmap for delivering an improved advisory experience.

Image of sketches created by workshop participants
Workshop ideation
Image of idea cards with dot votes by workshop participants
Idea dot-voting
Image collage of slides from the readout deck
Workshop readout

3. Designing a New Risk Tolerance & Goals Experience

One concept that rose to the top during the workshop was the need for a modernized Risk Tolerance Questionnaire (RTQ) and goal-capture experience.

We developed multiple concept approaches and conducted usability testing sessions with advisors and investors to evaluate them.

Participants interacted with prototype experiences representing different approaches to risk discovery, including:

  • A conversational questionnaire with built-in education
  • A model where users initially choose their perceived risk level
  • A scenario-based questionnaire focused on investment outcomes

Overall, advisors and clients responded positively to the redesigned concepts, noting improved clarity and engagement compared to traditional risk questionnaires.

Collage of design comps for the “Risk Tolerance Questionnaire”
The “Risk Tolerance Questionnaire” designs

The Results

The engagement produced both strategic direction and tangible product concepts that Cetera could incorporate into its roadmap.

Key outcomes included:

A clear vision for an elevated advisory experience

Research and workshop outputs established guiding principles for improving how advisors collect information, engage clients, and present recommendations.

A prioritized roadmap for advisory innovation

Ideas generated during the workshop were categorized by value and feasibility, helping Cetera identify foundational capabilities and longer-term opportunities.

Validated concepts for a new risk and goal discovery experience

Usability testing confirmed strong interest in a more conversational, educational risk questionnaire tied directly to client goals.

A foundation for integrated advisory data

The work emphasized the importance of capturing risk and goal information digitally so it can be reused across proposals, client dashboards, and ongoing advisory conversations.

This is great.

It’s easy to click through, with not a lot of questions per page, a simple walk-through with lots of visuals. I’m excited for this.

User testing participant