A report that says private banks have made slow progress in boosting their social media presence says Barclays and UBS are the best performers in this regard.

A report that says private banks have made slow progress in boosting their social media presence says Barclays and UBS are the best performers in this regard.

Switzerland-based MyPrivateBanking Research, which has tracked technology and related issues in wealth management, says only 40 per cent of the 20 leading wealth managers worldwide have a presence on Facebook, while a half (50 per cent) are active on Twitter and 73 per cent can boast a LinkedIn page.

The study said these “relatively poor results” lag far behind the level of social media activities of retail banks, where 95 per cent of banks have a Facebook page and 90 per cent are active on Twitter. These are the main findings of the fourth global ranking of the social media presences of 20 leading banks and wealth managers in Social Media for Banking 2014: The Gap is Widening.

The leading banks in the overall social media ranking are Barclays and UBS (each of which earned 65 points out of a maximum of 90 points), followed by Societe Generale (64 points) and ABN AMRO (63 points).

“This group of leaders shows particular strengths in the areas of originality and innovation and customer service. Wells Fargo has the best retail bank social media presence (90 per cent of maximum achievable points), and Deutsche Bank can boast the best social media for its corporate unit and investor relations (92 per cent of maximum achievable points).  

In the ranking of the best wealth management social media, Barclays, RBS Coutts and Wells Fargo defend their 2013 top rankings, with Credit Suisse jumping 13 places to reach the third spot. UBS, Societe Generale and ABN AMRO all improved their 2013 rankings and share the 5th rank in the 2014 survey.

Compared to the 2013 benchmarking, the number of dedicated Facebook presences by the wealth management division of the top 20 banks has doubled from 20 per cent to 40 per cent, and Twitter is now used by 50 per cent of the wealth managers.

Coming up short

The report said shortcomings are “numerous” and are not limited to examples such as:

-- The level of interaction with users on most social networks is not satisfactory at all. For instance, the wealth management and private banking divisions earn a score of only 27 per cent of maximum possible points for their Twitter streams when it comes to user activity (re-Tweeting or having conversations on Twitter);

-- The quality of content is very unbalanced: Although the report found some instances of rich, stimulating and effective content across all social media channels, the overall picture shows that many private banks are failing to publish enough content. In too many cases the wealth managers failed to meet our criteria for the frequency of posts, Tweets or new video creation. For instance, the report found that only 25 per cent of wealth managers had posted on their Facebook timeline at least once over a five-day period;

There is a shortage of links from social media presences to the rest of the banks’ digital offerings on websites or other channels.

“While overall the use of social media by banks and wealth managers made some progress, we found that there was a shocking disparity between the offerings for retail clients and what banks provide to their wealthiest clientele. While the retail offering is of satisfactory quality, high-net-worth clients are in many cases put off by social media that is not interesting, not up-to-date and not interactive. This reflects a misperception by banks that social media is only used by members of the millennial generation, which is a great mistake as our research shows that social media is increasingly used by more senior and wealthier customer segments,” Steffen Binder, research director at MyPrivate Banking Research, said.  

In total, almost 300 social media presences were evaluated. Using 77 criteria in total for each bank, with up to 27 criteria for each division, the social media activities of each bank and division are ranked on the basis of an individual evaluation for their presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr.

The banks analysed were ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, BPCE, Citigroup, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, JP Morgan Chase, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Canada, RBS, Societe Generale, UBS, UniCredit; Wells Fargo.