A major study by IBM of more than 1,300 US wealth management clients says more than half (57 per cent) are not advocates of their firms and more than 40 per cent do not consider their firm a “trusted advisor” to help them meet their financial goals. Building Client Advocacy: New Opportunities for Wealth Management Firms comes as firms are trying to differentiate themselves and meet changing consumer demands for new investment products and services. Douglas Butler, financial markets leader, IBM Global Business Services, said: "Wealth management firms have attempted to become more client-centric by placing more personnel on the front lines. This strategy has met with limited success with costs often outstripping gains resulting in minimal improvement of client satisfaction. We believe firms must move away from traditional client satisfaction metrics and start focusing on client perceptions about the overall business relationship." As part of the study, IBM deployed a "Customer Focused Insight Quotient" to determine if a client considered themselves an advocate, antagonist or apathetic. This combines clients' ratings of three statements: I would recommend my primary wealth management firm to my friends and family members; if I needed a new financial service or product, I would go to my primary wealth management firm first; if another wealth management firm offered a set of competitive products or services, I would not switch firms. The resulting scores are used to group clients into advocates, who strongly agree with the statements, apathetics, who agree with the statements and antagonists, who disagree with the statements. Only 43 per cent of wealth management clients' responses indicated they are advocates of their wealth management firm. One out of every five wealth management clients (19 per cent) is an antagonist. Advocates are over twice as likely as antagonists to consolidate 80 per cent of their assets with one firm and are 60 per cent less likely to be sensitive to fees – making them more likely to place value on other capabilities instead of focusing only on transaction costs. Areas in which apathetic clients scored staff capabilities poorly included understanding client needs, offering the best advice and effective teaming. Primary data were collected online from 1,311 US wealth management clients each with investable assets of over $500,000.