Survey finds millennial dissatisfaction with self-directed investment firms

A new survey from J.D. Power finds that 27% of millennials who are self-directed investors are considering moving their business to another financial institution within the next year, driven by a dissatisfaction with firms’ mobile platforms and confusion about investment fees.

The survey, which polled 1,744 investors in late 2018, found that millennials were more likely than boomers to rely on mobile technology. Eighty percent of millennials use their phones to execute trades, compared to 47% of boomers, yet only 30% of millennials said they completely understood the mobile features and services available to them.

“The expectation of young investors is to have a mobile experience that offers full functionality to do anything they can on the website, whether that means executing trades, transferring funds, reviewing their portfolio, or even using tools,” Michael Foy, J.D. Power’s senior director of wealth and lending intelligence, said in a release. “Financial institutions that want to build loyalty with this critical segment need to improve the customer experience to reflect investors’ priorities and expectations.”

Millennials were also less likely than boomers to understand investment fees, the survey found. Fifty-eight percent of boomers said they “completely” understood the fees they were charged, compared to 38% of millennials. Customer satisfaction with fees was 157 points higher (on a 1,000-point scale) among investors who said they completely understood fees compared to those who didn’t.

The survey also found that millennial investors were more likely to be aggressive, more likely to be female, more likely to be college-educated, less likely to be white and less likely to be married.

Desjardins had the highest customer satisfaction rating from self-directed investors with a score of 753, followed by CIBC Investor’s Edge (745), Questrade (740) and BMO InvestorLine (732).

Read the full survey results here.

Staff

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