The Envision® Process

From the very beginning of our relationships with clients, we work to establish a foundation of care and trust. 

We believe the Wells Fargo Advisors Envision process is the perfect first step – it allows us to engage in deep conversations with you about your goals and wishes, as well as the challenges you face, to gain a better understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish and how we can help. Understanding your life, your priorities, and your comfort with risk can help us make the right recommendations for you. 

The Envision process offers you an effective way to identify your highest-priority goals and develop an investment plan designed to provide you with the wealth you need to live your life the way you want. Instead of tracking your portfolio’s performance against a standardized index, such as the S&P 500, you can monitor your progress toward achieving your life goals on your own target zone.


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What you can expect from the process:

  • Define major life goals: You and your financial advisor will sit down together to begin exploring your goals and dreams and discuss any concerns you might have around achieving them. 

  • Set ideal and acceptable goals: Throughout your conversations, you’ll examine your ability to achieve your goals in multiple scenarios, starting with the ideal and the acceptable. The ideal scenario represents your goals and dreams in a “perfect world.” The acceptable scenario represents the compromises you could make to your ideal goals and still feel comfortable with your life. 

  • Prioritize goals: To explore as many of your ideal goals as possible, we encourage the use of our Envision Priority Cards. This interactive activity ensures that you and your financial advisor are on the same page, working together to achieve the goals you value most. 

  • Stress test goals: To determine the level of confidence you can achieve with your ideal and acceptable goals, the Envision technology stress-tests each scenario 1,000 times. During each of these 1,000 iterations, your goals are subjected to simulated random market returns (up years, down years, flat years, etc.) to help you determine how likely you are to achieve your goals. 
  • Recommendation: Once your financial advisor has an understanding of your ideal or acceptable goals, he or she will create a recommended scenario incorporating the goals you value most while potentially deemphasizing some of your lower priority goals. 

  • Implement allocation: Based on your goals, dreams, concerns, risk tolerance, and financial circumstances, your financial advisor can propose an investment mix to help you achieve those goals. 

  • Monitor progress: Your Envision plan will create a benchmark unique to your goals and circumstances as a way to track progress along the way. This information will update each night and is available on your statements and online. 

  • New goals and priorities: Change can present challenges, whether it happens in your own life or in the world around you. If your goals or financial circumstances change, or the markets fluctuate, it’s easy to update your Envision plan to account for the changes and measure the impact it has on your ability to stay on track.
Diversification is an investment method used to help manage risk. It does not guarantee investment returns or eliminate risk of loss including in a declining market.

IMPORTANT: The projections or other information generated by the Envision tool regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results, and are not guarantees of future results. Results may vary with each use and over time. 

ENVISION METHODOLOGY: Based on accepted statistical methods, the Envision tool uses a simulation model to test your Ideal, Acceptable and Recommended Investment Plans. The simulation model uses assumptions about inflation, financial market returns and the relationships among these variables. These assumptions were derived from analysis of historical data. Using Monte Carlo simulation the Envision tool simulates, different potential outcomes over a lifetime of investing varying historical risk, return, and correlation amongst the assets. Some of these scenarios will assume strong financial market returns, similar to the best periods of history for investors. Other will be similar to the worst periods in investing history. Most scenarios will fall somewhere in between. Elements of the Envision presentations and simulation results are under license from Wealthcare Capital Management LLC. © 2003-2021 Wealthcare Capital Management LLC. All Rights Reserved. Wealthcare Capital Management LLC is a separate entity and is not directly affiliated with Wells Fargo Advisors.