Analysis by Steffen Binder, Research Director
In his seminal work, ‘Competitive Strategy’, the world-renowned Prof. Michael Porter has identified five major forces that shape competition and success for the players in every industry. If you look at social media through the perspective of these five forces, the consequences they unleash for the competitive dynamic in the banking sector become very clear....
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2011 Mobile Applications Report
The mobile applications of Deutsche Bank and the French bank Caisse d'Epargne come out as winners in a benchmarking of a total of almost 200 mobile apps, offered by the world´s top 50 banks. Scoring 40 points out of 60 with just a single app, Bank of China is the winner in the category of best standalone banking app. Surprisingly, only one US-based bank has made it into the Top10 of...
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Interview with Trevor Pavitt, Passive Investing
Trevor Pavitt and Alex Arnbäck are co-founders of Passive Investing, a Geneva-based wealth adviser specializing in passive investment strategies. They have just published their new book "Heal Your Investments". In this interview ex-Private Banker Trevor Pavitt speaks about what motivated him and co-author Arnbäck to write a book that challenges the philosophies and strategies of the existing wealth management industry...
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UK Wealth Analyst Francis Groves on the UK Ban for Kickbacks
The UK’s Retail Distribution Review (RDR) has been a long time arriving. Zero hour for the end of commission-based advice to private individuals is roughly 15 months away; midnight on 31st December 2012, to be precise. RDR could usher in a golden age of advising investors without the baleful effects of investment fund kickbacks to advisers. However, in truth, the outlook is not as sunny as that....
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MyPrivateBanking in the Media
Recent research published by MyPrivateBanking received extensive media coverage from the world’s leading business newspapers such as Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Wall Street Journal’s Article “Financial Advisers´Little Secrets: Their Past Results” reported...
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Initiating a Discussion on the Future of Wealth Management
Over the last two years MyPrivateBanking.com has evolved into a platform to educate and connect wealth management clients, promote their rights and interests and highlight the responsibilities of wealth managers and private banks.
To capture the essence of these ...
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MyPrivateBanking Research Flash
New research findings by MyPrivateBanking Research reveal that only 10% of the world’s most important wealth managers publish performance data for their discretionary accounts and only 22% offer specific information about their fees....
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New Research by MyPrivateBanking
The recent events in North Africa and the Middle East show once again that every time a dictator falls from power, governments, politicians and banks across the world announce that his, his family’s and follower’s assets in foreign countries will be frozen and later returned to the new, legitimate government. But the fact of the matter is that these announcements have only been paying lip service to the public....
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New MyPrivateBanking Research Report
The 2011 report on private banking websites by MyPrivatebanking Research finds that compared to the 2009 survey the overall quality of the websites has not improved: less than half of the banks have mastered the basic requirements for a private banking website and...
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New MyPrivateBanking Report
60% of surveyed Wealth Managers have either no activity or are only sporadically active on social networks – Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole and BNP have the best social media presences....
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Wealth: New Trend in Client Behavior
An important trend for wealth managers and private bankers is that private banking clients use more frequently social networks like facebook or LinkedIn and visit...
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New Survey on Top European Private Banks
MyPrivateBanking.com has just released its annual survey on the top European based private banks and wealth managers. 20 of the most important private banks in Europe were selected to assess the quality of their customer interface, their investment proposal and the total cost of...
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Participate in the MyPrivateBanking Social Media Survey
Win an iPad2 or one of five Amazon vouchers by participating in our yearly survey about social media and mobile apps. ...
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Interview with Carey Wealth Reporting in Zurich
We had the opportunity to sit down with Patrick Bos and Kevin Halouska of Carey Wealth Reporting A.G. in Zurich. We talked about a broad range of issues related to wealth reporting since this is one of the topics that surfaces time and again, particularly when clients lose money or miss opportunities as a result of inefficient or incomplete (consolidated) reporting. Unfortunately consolidated reporting is still very often unclear and arcane....
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Dealing with Fear and Panic in the Markets
Since 2008 markets have seen a lot of up and down movements. In our report "Insufficient Client Focus – A Survey of European Private Banks’" we showed already in 2009 just how pro-cyclical and short-termist the advice of many (but not all) private banks was at the time. Today, we have a similar situation: bankers advise their clients to switch their assets into safe havens such as gold, Swiss Francs or Asian currencies and cash. But only a few months ago...
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MyPrivateBanking Research Brief
Private investors should be skeptical about investing in the new wave of initial public offerings (IPOs) for internet companies’ stocks. This is the main conclusion of new research by MyPrivateBanking, for which we compared the main players, mechanisms and results of the late 1990s/early 2000s dot-com bubble with the newly developing wave of Internet IPOs...
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New Guide from MyPrivateBanking Research
Passive investing and Exchange Traded Funds are all the rage. However, as always when new products are becoming popular very quickly risks and unwanted side-effects are increasing as well....
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Advice: How to Pay Your Wealth Manager
MyPrivateBanking has done a great deal of research on fee arrangements and comes to the conclusion that the fees private banking clients pay to their wealth managers or private bankers are often too high....
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Advice: Meeting a Potential Client
Only a structured questionnaire ensures a comprehensive profile of a private banking client. Unfortunately, we have found that only a minority of wealth managers and private bankers...
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Advice: How to Invest in Mutual Funds
Many investors are wondering whether or not it makes sense to invest in active funds at all. Here are our top-10 guidelines for fund investment. The main take-away is: only when a fund manager can prove a long-term outstanding performance does it make sense to invest in an actively managed fund....
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Advice: Costs of Wealth Management
As a private banking client, you not only pay a substantial direct fee for your wealth management, but also indirectly for various hidden costs of products and...
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Advice: The Right Asset Mix (Part 2)
In part 1 of this series we talked about the three main factors that determine your outlook on investments: Your investment goals, risk tolerance and the ability to cope with uncertainty. If you take these three factors together you can determine a person’s overall financial personality....
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Advice: Cut Your Costs of Wealth Management (Part 2)
In the second part of our series on how to cut the costs of wealth management and private banking we analyse the various cost drivers and pricing models of wealth management and private banking. ...
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Advice: Watch Your Wealth Manager
It seems like a recipe for disaster right out of the text book on behavioural finance: In a bull market your private banker recommends a lot of risky products but once the market has tanked, he is the most conservative adviser in the world....
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Analysis by Francis Groves, MyPrivateBanking's ETF-Specialist
ETFs are becoming increasingly popular with private investors, at the same time ETF structures are growing more complex. Could ETF popularity in combination with complexity nurture hidden risks to the financial...
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Series on ETFs (4): How Risky Are They Really?
The following analysis addresses the risk of investing in exotic ETFs or, in other words, the danger that an investor invests in an unfamiliar underlying index of assets without appreciating or quantifying the risks. And the scope for branching out into exotic ETFs is increasing...
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Collectibles: Wine as an Investment
It is definitely possible to make money through investing in top wines; however, it is certainly not as easy as is often suggested. If you decide to invest in wine, which wines should you focus on?
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Products: How to Build an ETF-Portfolio
This Website has been actively supporting the use of index products like ETFs to build an investment portfolio. The advantages are clear...
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Interview with Gunnar Grape, Reporting Specialist
Gunnar Grape is the managing director of iComps GmbH, which offers various services to support wealth managers in the administration of their client portfolios and providing clients’ investment reports. We discussed with him the current state of client reporting and what a good investment report from a wealth manager should look like...
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Interview with Financial Author Francis Groves
Francis Groves is the author of the recently published book Exchange Traded Funds: A Concise Guide to ETFs. In this interview the ETF expert explains how to build a sensible portfolio from ETFs, the typical mistakes private investors make with ETFs, what they can do and simple steps to contain the biggest risks. ...
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Interview with Karl M. Schmidt, CEO qurin bank
Karl Matthäus Schmidt is the CEO of the first fee-only private bank in Germany which offers clients wealth advice without conflict of interest. We talked with him about the acceptance of this new advisory model among clients and what has to be done to make the wealth management market more transparent...
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Interview with Gerd Kommer, Author of the Buy-and-Hold-Bible
Gerd Kommer is the author of various best-selling investment guides. He is a strong advocate of a passive, indexing-based investment strategy. In this interview, he talks about what a good wealth manager should do, and why the wealth management and private banking industry must shrink to better...
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Interview with Alexandre Arnbäck, Passive Management SA
Alexandre Arnbäck is the co-founder of Passive Management SA and a former private banker with Lombard Odier. He is convinced that only a passive investment approach can give optimal performance with the lowest possible risk to wealth management and private banking clients...
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What Our Members' Discussed this Summer
Over the course of the summer our group discussions were, not surprisingly, dominated by questions on how to deal with the crisis in the financial markets and, in particular, on how to protect assets from a possible melt-down in asset prices and currencies. ...
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What Our Members' Discussions Have Covered (May 2011)
Last month our group members shared their thoughts and experiences on various topics. What follows are a few highlights of these discussions, such as inside knowledge on a banker’s conflicts of interest...
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Member Feedback: GPS 1
Our member, GPS1, were so kind to give us detailed feedback on his selection process for a new financial advisor based on our research. What follows is his own account of how he found the right advisor...
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MyPrivateBanking Member Portrait: Gus49
In our series of portraits of MyPrivatebanking Members we interviewed Gus_49, a real estate broker living in Paris, on his investment experiences and portfolio management....
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What our Members Say (April 2010)
Group discussions at MyPrivateBanking.com in April focussed towards the end of the month more and more on the implications of the Greek crisis for members’ wealth management. ...
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What our Members Say (March 2010)
Group discussions at MyPrivateBanking.com in March covered a broad range of topics. Again costs have been a hot issue and we received several new postings, the latest on all-in fees (”Fee for fixed income portfolio of €2,000,000: 0.6% p.a. all in...
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Top Private Banking Links, February 22, 2011:
Plus: Why true diversification matters; Mubarak’s money most likely goes to UAE; The Oppenheimers – South Africa’s royal business family; What the bible says on taxing the rich...
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Top Private Wealth Links, December 6
How in Europe kick-backs are on the retreat, Geneva wealth boutique offers money back guarantee, top-10 mistakes of the common investor, a trust fund for your beloved pet and ...
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This Week's Top Private Wealth Links
Why the SEC should make brokers responsible, what financial lessons you should teach your kids, how Americans lead the world in philanthropy, what a dying wealth manager has to say and...
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