Zwei Wealth speaks of the chaos in private banking and wealth management in its latest transparency report. The desire among clients to compare products is growing, but navigating the investments is nearly impossible.
The labyrinth of service models, investment strategies, performance, and cost structures makes life difficult for customers and almost impossible to compare offers. Zwei Wealth, a Zurich-based company co-founded by Patrick Mueller and Klaus Wellershoff, aims to change this, by positioning itself as a comparison portal for the industry seeking a machete to cut through the thicket of products.
Its annual transparency report looks into goes customer satisfaction, net yields, risks, and wealth management costs.
The report identifies changing trends in the development of service models, where the private bank model is losing ground, and family and wealth offices achieve the highest customer satisfaction. The trend toward innovative, independent service models shows marked acceleration. The trend towards innovative, transparent, and, above all, independent service models is accelerating rapidly, Matthias Lehmann, member of the executive board of Zwei Wealth, noted at a client presentation on Tuesday evening.
New Provider Rating
Zwei Wealth has added another component to the survey, introducing a provider rating as a seal of quality for banks and wealth managers. The metric assesses the success factors of a bank or asset manager to deliver good quality portfolio management.
Looking at the offerings per portfolio category, over 500 banks and asset managers were asked for their best offerings in each of the six categories.
Exploiting Potential Cost Savings
Costs can be a major drag on investors' returns, with confusing fee structures often complicating the overview. According to the analysis, however, all-in fees or flat fees can also contain hidden costs. This is the only way to properly identify the potential for cost savings, said Kevin Jud of Zwei Wealth. And, incidentally, it is also very easy to negotiate fees with providers.
