Wealth Management “Trailing Far Behind” On Service Standards – New Research

Wendy Spires

15 May 2013

Despite an avowed focus on the highest standards of personal service, over half of wealth management professionals believe that the industry trails far behind other HNW service providers on service quality.

This was another of the headline findings from WealthBriefing’s latest research report The New Normal: Codifying Superior Client Experience In Wealth Management, produced in association with Barclays Wealth and Investment Management. (The report is free to download as part of WealthBriefing member benefits, as is access to an extensive webcast of senior executives discussing its findings).

This 50-page report, which launched today, examines the hot topic of client experience across the piece, covering everything from how firms are using segmentation to enhance service standards to the ways in which feedback data can be leveraged strategically. The report is the product of deep collaboration with experts across the industry, as well as a reader survey of 346 front-line professionals, and in essence aims to gauge what firms are currently doing to enhance the client experience they deliver, and to offer best practice insights for future development.

Comparisons between the client experience delivered by wealth managers and other kinds of organisations are high on the agenda at present. The industry is now awake to a new reality in which HNW individuals are openly comparing the wealth management provision they receive far more openly than ever before: the gap between those firms which are taking improving client experience really seriously and those which aren’t yet is therefore only to become even starker in clients’ minds.

Learning from other sectors

The wealth management industry may need to play catch-up in some elements of the client experience, but one really positive theme to emerge from the report was just how open firms are now to learning from other sectors. Current thinking emphasises that clients are comparing the best experiences they receive right across their lives and so it might be that the likes of Amazon and Google have as much to teach wealth managers as the luxury hotel and concierge groups. In the words of Lisa Worley, global head of marketing at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management, “Why wouldn’t we take those great service principles from other industries and apply them in the wealth management space as well?”

The New Normal: Codifying Superior Client Experience In Wealth Management features in-depth case studies and focus pieces from right across the international wealth management industry: in total 25 hours of interviews with 30 senior executives at leading wealth managers, consultancies and other pertinent organisations were carried out, while the report also features a very frank interview with an ultra high net worth client which is essential reading for any wealth management professional.

To download your free copy of The New Normal: Codifying Superior Client Experience In Wealth Management click here.

As an example of a part of the report that has already drawn big interest from this website's readers, according to web traffic, click here.