Rising stock values lifted wealth management clients' grades for the largest firms in the industry, with a new winner of J.D. Power's Full-Service Investor Satisfaction Study benefitting the most.
U.S. Bank jumped all the way to the top spot in the research and consulting firm's closely followed
"It is conventional wisdom that investor satisfaction tracks closely with stock market performance, but for advisors who want to build long-term, sustainable relationships that can weather good markets and bad, they will need to build a deeper level of engagement with clients," Craig Martin, the global head of wealth and lending intelligence at J.D. Power, said in a statement. "This is especially true among the younger segment of investors who show lower levels of client loyalty than investors in other generational groups. Advisors will need to adjust their approach to meaningfully connect with younger investors or risk a major outflow of assets in coming years."
Indeed, at least 36% of millennials with more than $1 million in investable assets told J.D. Power that they "probably will" or "definitely will" switch wealth management firms in the next year. About 70% of them already use a secondary investment firm, which is a much higher percentage than older affluent clients. And, regardless of age, clients are using investment technology frequently: 86% have logged into their firm's web portal in the past year and 60% are accessing their account through their company's mobile application.
The findings follow several recent studies
Many younger prospective clients may also be "looking for a more personalized relationship at this point" after using self-directed investment apps in their first forays into investing, according to Dinon Hughes, a financial consultant with Portsmouth, New Hampshire- and Kennebunk, Maine-based
Since keeping clients' kids with the firm is "top of mind for us," Hughes often works with the younger generation of customers whose parents are clients of the more senior advisors at the firm, he noted. The industry's traditional arrangement usually calls for the advisor to "help your kids out too" as a kind of "fringe benefit" to the client, Hughes said in an interview.
"There's definitely a disconnect there if the advisor is their parents' age," he said. "It's a communication disconnect, a technology disconnect. The advisor isn't communicating with that next-generation client the way that they want to be communicated with."
To see which full-service investment firms fared the best in J.D. Power's annual survey, scroll down the slideshow. For results from prior years, see our slideshows from
Note: Only firms with at least 100 customers in the poll received individual customer satisfaction grades on a 1,000-point scale based on the following seven factors, which were weighted in this order: "trust; people; products and services; value for fees; ability to manage wealth how and when I want; problem resolution; and digital channels."
Between January 2023 and January 2024, J.D. Power spoke with 9,951 investors who said they work with an advisor or team of advisors.
