Larigent Fraud Lifecycle Practice Assessment
A capacity self-assessment for financial planners, RIAs, and professional fiduciaries; where your people, your systems, and your data already meet the Larigent Fraud Lifecycle, and where a documented process would close the gap.
Purpose and how to use this assessment
Takes about 15-20 minutes to complete in full, across all six phases and 25 questions. Your marks are saved in this browser as you go, so you can stop partway and pick back up later.
This assessment maps your practice's existing procedures against the six phases of the Larigent Fraud Lifecycle - a closed-loop model of how stranger-perpetrated elder financial exploitation actually unfolds, from reconnaissance through re-targeting. It asks a narrower question than most fraud training: not whether you can recognize a scam, but whether your practice already has a documented, rehearsed way to act once a signal reaches you.
A capacity assessment, not a detection tool
If your practice already uses fraud-alert or account-monitoring software, or your team has completed a bank- or association-sponsored awareness course, this assessment does not ask whether those exist. It asks what happens next: when an alert fires, a course ends, or a client discloses something unprompted, does someone have a documented, tested procedure to follow - or does each person improvise, that day, under pressure?
That gap - between recognizing a problem and having an installed, repeatable response to it - is what Larigent calls the Capacity Gap. This assessment inventories where your practice has already closed it, and where it hasn't.
What this assessment does not ask
Every question below is about a fact of your practice - whether a form exists, a step is documented, or a channel is agreed in advance - never about a client's judgment or capacity. This assessment examines the gap in your practice's protective infrastructure, not any individual client, and nothing in it asks you to diagnose, assess, or conclude anything about a person you serve.
Scope: the arc this assessment models
The Larigent Fraud Lifecycle models the stranger-perpetrated, remote fraud arc - the pattern behind roughly four out of five reported cases of elder financial exploitation, per the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in its analysis of suspicious-activity filings. Exploitation by a familiar person - an adult child, a caregiver, an agent under power of attorney - follows a different pattern, uses different instruments, and is not the focus of this assessment.
Three layers, one assessment
Each phase below is checked across three practical layers, not just one:
- In person. A documented way your team talks to a client, in the moment - a script, a habit, a next step.
- Your own systems and data. What your CRM, portfolio-management software, or any vendor tool you already pay for is configured to do - a required field, a rule, a scheduled review - whether or not anyone remembers to act manually.
- Your custodian or broker-dealer. Where it applies, a short note on what to verify with systems that sit outside your firm's direct control but still shape what reaches you.
All three layers are scored on the same four-point scale, and none of them asks about anything beyond your own practice's infrastructure - see "What this assessment does not ask," above.
How to score each item
Each self-assessment question uses the same four-point scale below. Mark the tier that best describes where your practice stands today - your marks are saved in this browser as you go.
| 0 - Not in place | No documented step. Nothing to point to if asked. |
| 1 - Informal | Something happens, but it isn't written down and isn't consistent from person to person. |
| 2 - Documented | A written step or form exists, but hasn't been tested or reviewed in the past year. |
| 3 - Installed | Written, tested, and - where it can be - pre-enrolled before any pressure exists. |
Which path is yours
This assessment covers two professional roles: Financial Planner / RIA (Registered Investment Adviser) and Professional Fiduciary. Both are positioned to notice a warning sign and interrupt it before a loss occurs, rather than arriving only after the fact - which is why the same six-phase structure applies to both. Where the two roles differ is which phases they are actually present for, shown in the table below.
Select a path to highlight the guidance written for you - every section stays visible either way, and you can switch at any time.
One note on terms before you choose a path: every role in this assessment already owes some form of fiduciary duty to the people it serves - an RIA, for instance, is legally a fiduciary to its own clients. That is not what separates the two paths below. "Professional Fiduciary" here means something narrower and specific: someone formally appointed to manage another person's financial affairs - as an agent under power of attorney, a trustee, or a court-appointed conservator or guardian - where that appointment, not investment advice or planning, is the primary professional relationship.
A CPA who provides ongoing personal financial planning or tax services to an older client, without holding a formal appointment over that client's affairs, sits in the same seat as a Financial Planner / RIA and should use that path. A CPA who has been formally appointed as a trustee, agent under power of attorney, or conservator for a client should use the Professional Fiduciary path for that relationship. Use whichever matches the role you are actually playing for a given client, not the credential on your door - the same professional may sit in a different seat for different clients.
| Your role | Primary entry point | Also positioned to see | Structurally does not see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Planner / RIA | Phase 1 & 6 - onboarding and annual review | Phase 4, Phase 5 | Phase 2, Phase 3 |
| Professional Fiduciary | Phase 1 - onboarding & review | Phase 3, 4, 5, 6 | Phase 2 only |
Where a phase says "structurally does not see," that is not a gap in your controls - it is the nature of the seat. Neither role is present when first contact is made. This assessment says so plainly at each phase, rather than asking you to self-assess something you were never positioned to observe.
Scoring summary
Your marks from each phase carry forward into this table automatically. A pattern of low scores clustered in one phase points to where a focused, documented process would do the most good; scattered gaps point to a general habit worth building practice-wide.
Where to take this next
You can print or save your results at any point using the button in the panel to the side - the summary table above is built to be read on its own, without this page open, as an internal discussion document.
Whatever your marks show, the next step is the same one this assessment was written to end on: a conversation, not a sales process. If a specific phase raised more questions than it answered, bring your printed results - that's exactly what a first conversation with Larigent is for.
Start a conversation →Opens larigent.com/contact in a new tab.
What this assessment does not do
It is not legal advice. Larigent is not a law firm, and nothing here substitutes for counsel - particularly for the Co-Offender Branch in Phase 5, where a professional's own reporting obligations may attach independently of a client's wishes.
It is not a capacity or vulnerability determination about any client. Every question in this assessment is about your practice's own infrastructure - a form, a script, a channel, a schedule - never about a client's judgment, cognition, or state of mind.
It does not replace your firm's compliance program, your custodian's fraud controls, or any monitoring or alert platform you already use. It is a check on what happens after those tools do their job.
It is scoped to the stranger-perpetrated, remote fraud arc - roughly four out of five reported cases. Exploitation by a familiar person follows a different pattern and needs separate instruments.
The "Your own systems and data" panels are the newest, least field-tested part of this assessment. They ask what your existing CRM, portfolio-management software, or vendor tools could be configured to do - not what Larigent is building or selling. Named vendor capabilities are leads to verify with the vendor, not confirmed facts, and none of this content has been tested against an actual firm's systems yet.
Legal and regulatory references in this assessment - including FINRA rules, statutory hold windows, and state program details - reflect the information available when this assessment was last updated and may have changed since. Verify current requirements independently before relying on them.
This assessment, and the practices it describes, are provided as is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including as to accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose. Using it does not create an advisory, consulting, or fiduciary relationship between your practice and Larigent, and Larigent is not responsible for any action taken, or not taken, on the basis of it.
Your answers and notes are saved only in your own browser's local storage. They are never transmitted to, collected by, or visible to Larigent, and clearing your browser data will erase them.
A closing note
A cluster of low scores in one phase is not a verdict on your practice. Most firms show exactly this pattern, because almost nothing in standard professional training addresses what happens between recognizing a problem and having a rehearsed way to act on it. That is the Capacity Gap Larigent's work is built to close, one phase at a time.