The overall quality of social media activity among prevalent global wealth managers and private banks has “not improved noticeably” over the last year, Swiss firm MyPrivateBanking says in a new report.

The overall quality of social media activity among prevalent
global wealth managers and private banks has “not improved noticeably” over the
last year, according to new research from Swiss research firm MyPrivateBanking and published exclusively by this website today.

The average number of points achieved by the 30 benchmarked
banks in this year’s report, Social Media
for Wealth Management 2013: The Train is Leaving, is 18 out of 50, down from
27 in 2012 but up from 13 in 2010.

While MyPrivateBanking highlighted that it has tightened its
evaluation criteria this year, the decline in the quality of social media usage
may also be because many wealth managers and private banks have come to a standstill
with their social media activities, it said.

The insights may come as a surprise at a
time when the concept of social media
seems to have embedded itself firmly in the wealth management space. But while
there is a lot of noise being made about it, it seems that a considerable number of industry players are
merely dipping their toes into the water.

For its research, the research firm looked at 30 wealth managers and private banks, looking at the quality of their social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+. With a score of 40 out of 50, Barclays was crowned winner, followed by UK private bank
Coutts (37); Wells Fargo (34); Pictet (33); and Merrill Lynch (30). 

Other entrants were: ABN AMRO, BNP
Paribas, BNY Mellon, Charles Schwab, Citibank, Commerzbank, Credit
Agricole, Credit Suisse, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, Investec,
Itau Private Bank, JP Morgan, Julius Bär, Morgan Stanley,
Northern Trust, Royal Bank of
Canada, Santander, Societe Generale, Standard Chartered, UBS and US Trust.