The 2012 "Social Media for Wealth Management" report by MyPrivateBanking has crowned Charles Schwab as number one worldwide in its provision.

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.

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.