Questioned Banks
Financial advice is the one area of consumer banking the Big Four are yet to dominate, according to the 2009 CoreData Financial Planning Shadow Shop.
Despite dominance in deposits, credit cards and mortgage markets – increased further by the perceived safety offered to fearful consumers in a time of financial crisis – non-bank brands continue to dominate in the financial advice arena.
While some of the larger institutions may be owned ultimately by the Big Four, planners of other brands are continuing to outshine their banking cousins – a reversal of what’s being seen in the mortgage broker market as consumers retreat directly to the majors.
In this year’s CoreData shadow shop, which covers 18 licensee groups and 450 separate shopper events, Apogee provided the best experience for would-be clients across the seven metrics of CoreData’s ACQUIRE Index© and was therein deemed the winner.
This was followed by Charter and Macquarie’s advice arm (excluding brokers), which were both Highly Commended, and ahead of RetireInvest and MLC Garvan, which were both Commended.
On the banking side NAB was the standout, ahead of ANZ and Westpac, although these three plus St. George and CBA collectively were adrift of the traditional IFA market.
The study uses real consumers who were either in the process of seeking a planner or already had a planner but were considering changing.
The main drivers behind choice of adviser lay very much in the softer skills of the advisers.
Advisers who were rated higher in a range of engagement, trust, assurance and perceived quality attributes fared much better.
There were some interesting differences between what drives decision making when split by sex, age, experience and also any losses stemming from the financial crisis.
There is a notable gap between the best and worst advisers in the industry and despite efforts by groups to standardise the client-adviser experience it remains a service-based industry and the influence of the individual planner’s personal approach/personality dominates exchanges with would-be clients.
Of those previously self-directed investors burned by the GFC, there was a polarity of experience in meeting with a planner. Some were very impressed while others were not and remain unadvised yet lack the confidence to revert to self direction and therein dwell in no-man’s land.
Australians have a mixed attitude when it comes to the majors – the banks are clearly more preferable destinations for commoditised products such as debt and deposits, but when it comes to advice and wealth management consumers tend to prefer other groups. In the minds of many consumers there is a distinct difference between a bank that offers financial advice and a business that offers financial advice as its bread and butter.
The drivers of decision making have changed a little over the past three years, yet a few core factors remain critical to how consumers decide upon an adviser. Despite the ups and downs of the past few years perceived value for money has not budged in terms of its influence, while the various roll-ups that feed into engagement have returned to the previous levels of correlation found in 2007. Also critically important in this year are advice relevance, knowledge & expertise, speech management and people skills.
One Comment on “Questioned Banks”
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Floost says:
Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.