Affluent investors tend to be very loyal to certain service providers, such as medical professionals. What about to their financial providers?
To find out, Spectrem Group conducted research in late 2015 with individuals primarily responsible for day-to-day financial decision making within the household. These included 1,108 mass affluent respondents ($100,000 to $999,999), 1,007 millionaires (between $1 million and $5 million) and 602 ultra-high-net-worth respondents ($5 million to $25 million).
According to the study, all affluent investors considered themselves very loyal. On a 100-point loyalty scale, respondents gave themselves a rating of 83.26.
The research showed that the degree of loyalty for different service providers depended on the time spent developing the relationship.
Following are respondents' loyalty ratings for different types of service providers:
- Doctors/dentists: 82.92
- Financial institutions: 73.53
- Financial advisor: 70.99
- Credit cards: 67.65
- Grocery stores: 67.62
- Airlines 55.30
Loyalty typically increases with increasing age and wealth, the study found. This is especially true with loyalty to financial advisors.
Spectrem said this was likely because the two parties spend more time together as advisors provide the increased number of services their wealthier investors require.
The research showed that senior corporate executives were most loyal to their financial advisors and financial institutions, followed by managers. Counterintuitively, business owners, who most rely on loyalty for their personal businesses, had the lowest levels of loyalty to their own service providers.
Four in 10 affluent investors in the study considered themselves more loyal to a person within the company than to the company or provider itself, while about a third felt the opposite.
Affluent investors rated service as the No.1 way to build client loyalty, followed by a track record with no problems.
