Affluent European investors report DIY confidence

Affluent European investors are confident they can construct their own portfolios, reveals research by Cerulli Associates.

In Germany, Switzerland and the U.K, at least 60% of survey respondents say they are either “fairly” or “very” confident in their ability to adopt a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to investing.

The one holdout is Spain, where only 26% of respondents have faith in their DIY investing ability.

Survey respondents had at least €200,000 to invest, reflecting a demographic that tends to be more financially literate than the average person, which probably helps boost confidence.

But having confidence doesn’t necessarily translate to forgoing advisors.

Read: 4 ways robo-advisors humanize automated tools

“In practice, investors might not have the time to build and monitor a portfolio, and they do not necessarily believe that they could do so better than their advisors. Nevertheless, they feel that they could get by with a minimum level of guidance,” says Barbara Wall, managing director at Cerulli, in a release.

Hand-in-hand with DIY confidence is the presence of robo-advice. The U.K. has the largest and most developed robo-advice market in Europe, with 42% of U.K. respondents saying they’d consider using it.

And robo-advice isn’t the domain of the young. In its first six months, the ages of the 1,500 investors who used Italian retail bank CheBanca’s robo-advisor, Yellow Advice, ranged from 35 to more than 55.

Read: Zombie banks hurting Europe’s economy

In Switzerland, more than a third of respondents say they have no knowledge of robo-advisors, despite reporting DIY confidence — a positive sign, perhaps, that investors rely on financial literacy to create successful portfolios regardless of available tools.

Also read: More Canadians warming up to robos

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.