Sponsored by
With so many wealth management providers targeting high-net-worth clients — and spending millions of dollars to attract them — it’s not surprising that information about the experiences and preferences of that affluent target market is in great demand. The usefulness of the information typically gathered, however, often is insufficient or inadequate to provide wealth providers with a clear understanding of how they compare to their peers. In response to industry demands for high quality benchmarking data and to provide wealth management firms with the reliable and useful insights needed to attract and retain high-net-worth clients, Schmidt Market Research created WealthMark™.
WealthMark™ is a proprietary benchmarking report designed by market research experts with years of experience in financial services. It starts with online survey data collected by one of the largest panel providers in the U.S. In the 2021 study, data was collected for all primary and secondary providers used and identified by the 2,748 respondents — an unusually large sample size that allows for results to be tested statistically at the 95% confidence level.
To qualify, respondents must have at least one Wealth Management or Private Banking service with an institution that services High Net Worth (HNW) individuals. Data quality is paramount in WealthMark™, whose methodology involves a four-part quality checklist including a two-tiered review and scrubbing process of records and ensuring respondents are only asked for their feedback once per year.
WealthMark™ is designed and executed in a manner to be valuable to a wide variety of wealth management providers. It provides a true apples-to-apples comparison of providers, as data come from one source and feedback is gathered using a consistent methodology that applies the same scaling for all wealth management providers. And because many providers offer services that cut across the wealth spectrum and can be classified differently from the way they are grouped in a WealthMark™ report, Schmidt offers custom analysis that can tailor a peer set to each subscriber’s specifications. That data can be segmented based on asset size and/or product use.
As you will see in the following slides, the scores reported in our WealthMark™ report are lower than those seen in typical custom studies. That is because data are based on a blind market study rather than on a sponsored client study. The blind market study base also results in a high proportion of secondary provider ratings, which also brings down scores. This result is consistent with what is observed in custom studies where primary ratings are much more favorable than secondary ratings. Because of the more objective and comprehensive nature of WealthMark™ results, focusing on the competitive positioning of providers versus the reported scores is more insightful and more useful when considering how the study’s results can be translated into action.
Full reports available for purchase from Schmidt Market Research.
