Commentary

Half Of Financial Advisors Use Social Media To Communicate With Clients

Well, I shoulda known: I write a post about financial advisors using social media only to find out a week later that some of the data is out of date. Please consider this post a correction.

It turns out that almost 50% of financial advisors are using social media to communicate with clients on a daily basis, according to a new survey of 400 financial advisors conducted by Accenture. That compares with the figure of 39% I cited last week (which referred to social media usage in general, regardless of schedule or frequency). Obviously financial advisors are catching up fast -- probably because they have no choice.

The Accenture report, titled “Closing the Gap: How Tech-Savvy Advisors Can Regain Investor Trust,” also found that 74% of financial advisors believe social media is helping them build their asset portfolio, while half have used social media to gain new clients. Furthermore, 49% said they think firms that fail to use social media will lose clients as a result.

Social media can help advisors gain a better understanding of their clients’ situations, according to Alex Pigliucci, the global managing director of Accenture’s Wealth and Asset Management Services: “Understanding what’s going on in the life of an investor and making that useful to advisors is very powerful. Video conferences, rolling out online education and seminars and interacting with social media in an integrated way helps advisors be more in line with their customers.”

Advisors would do well to become more familiar with their clients, judging by a fairly substantial disconnect in terms of how they perceive their relationships: while 67% of advisors say they have a “personal relationship” with clients, just 38% of clients said the same. 

Last week I also wrote about some (more up-to-date) research from Cogent Research which found that 34% of affluent investors use social media -- including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and blogs -- as a source of information for personal finance and investment decisions. Within this group, 70% -- or 24% of the total -- said they have shifted investments or begun (or changed) their relationships with investment providers due to information derived from social media.

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