Automated Wealth Analysis: What It Can Do (and What It Can't)
A wealth review with an advisor, a home-made spreadsheet, an automated analysis: what a real wealth diagnosis contains, and what a tool like Patrice's Full Analysis brings — and doesn't.
"What should I do with my money?" The question is universal. The available answers, for a long time, came down to two options: the wealth management advisor (in France, the CGP — conseiller en gestion de patrimoine) — relevant, but whose business model mainly targets wealth that's already built — or solitary DIY, between spreadsheets, forums and intuitions.
A third way has emerged: automated wealth analysis. A tool that examines your situation — assets, debts, flows, allocation — and draws a structured diagnosis from it, in a few seconds, for the price of a subscription. That's what Patrice's Full Analysis offers. This article explains what such a diagnosis contains, how it compares to the alternatives, and — because honesty is the best sales pitch — what it will never replace.
What a Wealth Review Actually Is
With a professional, a wealth review follows a proven outline. The inventory: everything you own and owe, valued as of a given date. The structural analysis: allocation by asset class, liquidity level, debt, risk exposure. The confrontation with your goals: what you want (passing wealth on, preparing for retirement, funding a project) set against what your situation allows. The recommendations: the gaps identified and the avenues for closing them.
Done seriously, the exercise is invaluable — it's the X-ray without which every financial decision is a bet. Its problem was never its usefulness: it's its accessibility. An in-depth review with an independent advisor costs several hundred euros; with commission-based advisors, it's "free" but naturally steers towards the products that pay for the advice. And in both cases, the review is a snapshot: in eighteen months, it will describe a situation that no longer exists.
The result: the vast majority of households have never had a wealth review. Not out of disinterest — out of friction.
What an Automated Analysis Does Well
An automated analysis rests on a simple principle: the structural part of a wealth diagnosis can be made objective. Widely consensual prudential rules — having a properly sized emergency fund, not concentrating your wealth in a single asset, containing your debt, matching liquidity to your time horizons — can be checked by calculation, systematically, without fatigue and without conflicts of interest.
Concretely, Patrice's Full Analysis examines your situation from every angle and produces factual findings, each backed by your numbers:
On structure: your net worth and its composition, the weight of each asset class, your real degree of diversification — the one you discover by consolidating, not the one you imagine.
On safety: the size of your emergency fund relative to your expenses, your debt ratio, the liquid share of your wealth — what can be mobilised if things go wrong.
On flows: savings rate, disposable income, weight of fixed expenses — the bridge with your budget tracking.
On trajectory: your progress over time, and what your current pace produces in projection — linked to the wealth simulation.
Every observation is phrased as a finding, never as an order: "your emergency fund covers 1.5 months of expenses, below the usual range of 3 to 6 months" — not "buy this product". The difference isn't cosmetic: it's at the heart of the model. Patrice does not sell any financial product and takes no commissions — so the analysis has no reason to lean.
The report can be saved, exported to PDF, shared — with a partner, or precisely with an advisor if you consult one. And above all, it can be rerun: after every notable change, the diagnosis updates with your current numbers. That's the structural difference with the snapshot review: a living diagnosis that follows your situation instead of photographing it once.
What an Automated Analysis Cannot Do
This is the section marketing pages rarely write. Here it is anyway, because knowing what a tool doesn't do is the condition for making good use of what it does.
It doesn't know your life. An algorithm sees numbers. It doesn't know a job relocation is looming, that an ageing parent will need help, that a couple is going through turbulence. These elements sometimes radically change what's reasonable to do — and they fit in no box.
It doesn't do bespoke engineering. Optimising a complex estate transfer, splitting property ownership (démembrement), structuring a holding company, international taxation: these matters belong to an advisory professional — a CGP, notaire (French notary), or tax lawyer. An automated analysis can flag that a topic deserves attention; it doesn't replace the expertise that handles it. For the general mechanisms, our articles on wealth taxation lay out the basics.
It doesn't decide for you. No diagnosis — human or automated — spares you the final call, which is yours: your risk tolerance, your priorities, your projects. The analysis informs the decision; it doesn't make it, and that's exactly as it should be.
It's worth what your data is worth. A diagnosis on a half-entered wealth picture is a half-wrong diagnosis. The quality of the initial inventory — complete, honestly valued — conditions everything else. That's true with an advisor too, by the way: the first hour of a professional review is information gathering.
Automated Diagnosis or Advisor: The False Duel
Framing the question as a duel is a framing error. The two tools don't operate on the same floor.
The automated analysis excels as a permanent foundation: it keeps the inventory up to date, monitors the structure continuously, flags drifts — concentration creeping in, the safety cushion eroding, debt climbing — at zero marginal cost. It's the regular technical inspection.
Human advice excels at the event: an estate transfer to organise, a major property decision, an expatriation, a business sale. Rare, high-stakes moments where bespoke expertise is easily worth its fees.
The two reinforce each other: arriving at an advisor's with consolidated wealth, a clean history and an analysis report in PDF turns the first hour of data gathering into an hour of real advice. The professional works better, and you pay for expertise — not data entry.
Who It's For, Concretely
The automated diagnosis changes the game above all for those the current system serves poorly: wealth under construction — too early to interest a CGP, too many questions to leave unanswered; those allergic to conflicts of interest, who want findings without a product attached; couples who need a shared factual basis to discuss — the shareable report as neutral ground; and everyone who has had "do a complete check-up" on their list for years without ever finding the time or the right person.
If you're wondering where to start, the answer comes in two steps: first consolidate — inventory everything in one place, the step our wealth review guide details — then analyse. The first step takes a quarter of an hour. The second, a few seconds.
Conclusion
There's nothing magic about a wealth diagnosis: it's an honest inventory, a rigorous structural reading, and findings backed by numbers. For a long time, that rigour had an entry price — in euros or in hours — that excluded most people. Automation has brought that wall down.
What it hasn't brought down: the need for accurate data going in, human expertise for complex situations, and your role in the decision. A good analysis tool doesn't claim to replace your notaire or your judgement. It does something else, and it does it continuously: turning your numbers into clear findings, so that no decision is ever made blind again.
