With each fintech innovation, human financial advisors are buffeted by predictions of their coming irrelevance, but they can take some comfort from the results of research released Thursday by J.D. Power.
Younger, value-conscious do-it-yourself investors are actively seeking the guidance of live professional advisors as the economy becomes increasingly uncertain, according to the redesigned J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Investor Satisfaction Study.
“For younger generations of investors who’ve been exposed to digital, human and hybrid forms of investment advice during the past several years, the decision to lean into DIY or advised channels is rarely ever an either/or scenario,” Kapil Vora, senior director of wealth intelligence at J.D. Power said in a statement.
More and more investors are adopting several approaches, Vora said, and younger ones who would traditionally have been slotted into the DIY category want to work with human advisors. However, firms must deliver value and make the experience easy for investors rather than fall back on brand legacy or an assortment of products and services.
J.D. Power’s new satisfaction study is a combination of its former U.S. full-service and U.S. self-directed investor satisfaction studies. The redesigned study evaluates the experiences of investors working with a wealth management firm, in either an advised or DIY capacity in these dimensions:
- Digital channels
- Ease of doing business
- People
- Product and service offerings
- Resolving problems or complaints
- Trust
- Value for fees paid
The 2025 study, fielded from January through December last year, is based on responses from 7,876 advised and 3,723 DIY investors.
Key Study Findings
Twenty-seven percent of current DIY investors say they are likely to use a financial advisor in the next 12 months. Millennials and Generation Z are most likely to do so, and Gen Xers least likely. A fifth of baby boomers and older DIY investors said they would do so.
“We anticipate these percentages would be even higher across all generations since the close of fielding for this study, given the economic shifts of the past several weeks,” Vora said.
Forty-one percent of investors with DIY investment accounts said the primary reasons for keeping those accounts are that their finances and investments are simple enough to manage on their own, and that they enjoy managing their own investments/finances.
Despite younger investors’ interest in advisory services, traditional wealth management firms are disproportionately skewed toward older investors, J.D. Power said. Traditional firms count just 11% of investors younger than 40 among their client base, compared with 20% at retirement/discount brokerage firms, 26% at banks and 42% at fintech firms.
Ease of doing business is critical when it comes to the individual dimensions that drive investor satisfaction with wealth management firms, ranking just below trust; products and services; and people as the foundation for a positive investor experience.
See the charts below for how advised and do-it-yourself investors ranked the firms they have worked with.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.