PricewaterhouseCoopers’ annual survey reveals the full effect of crisis on high net worth investors.
The Global Private Banking and Wealth Management Survey 2009 stresses that the industry needs to focus on client relationship management, the impact of increasing regulation on the industry and to update infrastructure.
The survey also reveals that HNW clients have become increasingly involved in the management of their wealth - often carrying out their own research and leaving private bankers merely an execution role. There are growing demands for transparency and solid due diligence processes.
Moreover, the report also highlights that government ownership of some banks has left clients with a degree of uncertainty. Some are reassured by the safety offered by state backing, others feel nervous about governments’ potential access to private information.
The need to update an under-invested infrastructure is apparent when looking at the average breakdown of customer relationship managers’ monthly chores: 16% of their time is spent on dealing with administration. This is almost as much as the time spent on marketing activities. CRMs also lament a too limited portion of their time allocated to contact clients: 40%.
Another interesting statistic is about chief executive officers’ perception of CRMs. They value as ‘good’ only 20% of such employees. While CRMs admit they do not entirely understand requirements of 20% of their clients.
The survey involved 238 organisations in 40 countries.
