As part of the research, the Swiss firm analysed over 100 mobiles apps provided by 30 wealth managers and - with scores of 52, 49 and 48 out of 60 respectively - ultimately crowned Credit Suisse, Société Générale and ABN Amro as the top three financial institutions with the best mobile app offerings for high net worth clients.

Credit Suisse was praised for the wide range of apps it provides that are relevant to wealthy clients, while Société Générale boasted strength in relation to client retention and marketing features. ABN AMRO, meanwhile, impressed with its content quality and practical usefulness of its apps. MyPrivateBanking noted, however, that Deutsche Bank’s “Meine Bank” app bagged top spot as the single best app, which on its own achieved the highest score. JP Morgan and US Trust came in at joint fourth place, with scores of 46.

Evaluation of results

Overall, wealth managers fared particularly well in the user-friendliness category , scoring 83 per cent of maximum possible points. Website integration emerged as another bright spot, achieving an average score of 79 per cent.

While the research firm concludes that there are too few mobile apps tailored for wealth management clients, citing “critical shortcomings”, the good news is that there is certainly more to play for. For example, the research shows that app coverage for Android devices is only 70 per cent compared to 100 per cent for iPhone devices.

Meanwhile, the number of firms providing portfolio analytics or trading/brokerage functions is still “much too low”, at 43 and 30 per cent respectively. Indeed, provision of market data , portfolio overviews and research content were branded as “satisfactory to good”, but these figures are still not as high as they could be.

In other significant findings, only 57 per cent of financial institutions serving wealthy clients are generally explaining their mobile security measures within their apps. This is surprising given the confidential nature of information involved and the level of noise the industry has made recently with regard to privacy and security.

“This vital information is often either missing, poorly explained or mixed up with security information in relation to online banking,” MyPrivateBanking says. Another intriguing finding is that just 40 per cent of the evaluated wealth managers integrate their apps with their social media presence.

“The greatest weakness in the mobile strategy of the leading wealth managers is the lack of true focus to wealthy client segment”, said Francis Groves, senior analyst of MyPrivateBanking. “Even institutions that already have solid reputations for delivering mobile resources to retail customers or offer some excellent wealth apps, are failing to view the mobile requirements of their wealthy clients in a truly comprehensive fashion.”