Charles Schwab has rocketed straight in to the number one spot in the 2012 social media rankings of wealth managers, according to a new report. Coutts, the private bank, has also fared particularly well.

Charles Schwab has rocketed straight into the number one spot in the 2012 social media rankings of wealth managers produced by MyPrivateBanking Research, WealthBriefing can exclusively report.

This is the US broker and wealth manager’s first year of inclusion in the Social Media for Wealth Management report and saw it immediately topple Deutsche Bank
from the top slot. Charles Schwab’s social media provision was given 42
out of a maximum of 50 points, just edging past Deutsche with 41
points.

Schwab was praised in particular for its “truly interactive, lively
Facebook page”, while the German runner-up was singled out for having a
bilingual YouTube channel featuring videos on a range of the bank’s
activities.

Another firm which should be very pleased with its performance is Coutts,
the flagship wealth management brand of the Royal Bank of Scotland
Group, which came in third place out of thirty with 38 points, having
been in eighteenth place in the previous 2010 ranking. In particular,
MyPrivateBanking lauded the blue-blooded bank for the social media
provision within its own website, which includes a private virtual
community for high net worth clients.

Top ten shake-up

This year’s rankings represent a radical shake-up of those from 2010,
with several meteoric rises, some disappointing falls and several new
entrants. The rest of the top ten for 2012 runs as follows: Citigroup 37
points (2010 ranking: 15th); Societe Generale 37 points (17^th); Barclays 36 points (7^th); Crédit Agricole 36 points (2^nd); Fidelity 34 points (new); Pictet 34 points (10^th); Investec 33 points (new); and Wells Fargo 33 points (13^th).

Looking at the industry broadly, MyPrivateBanking found that the
world’s wealth managers have seriously upped their game since 2010. This
year the average score given to institutions’ social media provision
was 27 - more than double the average of 13 for 2010. However, as
MyPrivateBanking notes, this average is still way off the maximum 50
points firms should be aspiring to.

Drilling down into the weaknesses still prevalent in the industry,
MyPrivateBanking found that just 20 per cent of the wealth managers
assessed have effective overall social media strategies for targeting
high net worth clients in place. Even more worryingly, more than half of
the wealth managers assessed have no social media strategy
specifically for the HNW. Instead they are “effectively relying on a
patchwork trial-and-error approach to build their social media,”
MyPrivateBanking said.

An increasingly important medium for the HNW

“We see modest improvements since our previous survey which suggest
that wealth managers, by and large, are on the right track, but reaching
only half of their potential in a medium rapidly growing in importance
for the target group.  This is far from being enough,” said Francis
Groves, senior analyst at MyPrivateBanking Research.

“There is still no comprehensive, targeted approach to social media
deployment in wealth management, of the kind that we find increasingly
in banks’ social media activities aimed at retail customers.”

While wealth managers may once have doubted whether HNW clients would
be interested in interacting with their wealth manager via social
media, this notion is rapidly falling by the wayside and social media
has become a priority at most institutions. However, massive holes in
firms’ provision do still remain, along with a lack of strategic focus,
which mean that the wealth management industry still has a way to go
before matching the social media offering of other HNW providers.

Holes in provision

MyPrivateBanking found that 14 of the 30 firms it assessed still do
not offer a dedicated wealth management presence on Facebook, while 12
have no specific LinkedIn presence. It should be noted however that
those wealth managers which are present on these platforms have
“improved their offerings in the last two years significantly,”
MyPrivateBanking said.   

Twitter deployment has also improved since 2010, MyPrivateBanking
said, but a targeted approach is still missing. In 2012 two-thirds of
the wealth managers assessed had a Twitter feed specifically for HNW
clients, up from just half in 2010. It would seem that multi-lingual
provision should also be a priority for the industry since 26 of the
wealth managers assessed this year do not offer the relevant Twitter
feeds in more than one language – a disappointing finding considering
the fact that the HNW are increasingly “global citizens” and that
wealthy clients are increasingly derived from multi-lingual markets.

Along with multi-lingual provision, wealth managers should also be
mindful of keeping their social media content up to date. Between 2010
and this year MyPrivateBanking found that the proportion of firms using
social media such as blogs or podcasts on their websites had grown from
30 per cent to 75 per cent, but only half of institutions were keeping
this content current.

One bright point in the analysis was wealth managers’ video provision
via YouTube and their own websites: the firms assessed scored an
average 80 per cent of the maximum achievable points for their video
channels.

MyPrivateBanking Research has the following advice for wealth
managers looking to develop their social media to the levels seen in
early-adopters like luxury retail and travel: they should open
themselves up fully to social media, determine a strategic direction and
build a dedicated group of media-savvy communication professionals that
monitor, coordinate and support the day-to-day activities on their
various social media platforms in different markets.

The client forum and research firm further adjures wealth managers to
have a presence on all relevant social media (Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter and YouTube being the “must-haves”) while also placing social
media elements on their own website. “Ensuring that all social media
presences are kept active and lively is key, as social media is all
about interaction and continuous updates,” the report’s authors
conclude.

MyPrivateBanking included the following wealth managers in its 2012
social media report: ABN AMRO, Banco Itaú, BNY Mellon, Barclays, BNP
Paribas, Bradesco, Charles Schwab, Citigroup, Coutts, Crédit Agricole,
Credit Suisse, DBS, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs,
HSBC, ING Private Bank, Investec, Julius Baer, Merrill Lynch, Morgan
Stanley, Northern Trust, Pictet, RBC, Standard Chartered, Societe
Generale, SunTrust, UBS, US Trust and Wells Fargo.