With noteworthy growth of Asia-Pacific’s HNW and mass affluent populations today, firms have started launching ambitious plans to capitalize on opportunities among the region’s wealthier segments. However, many firms are grappling with how to capture market share in the APAC region.

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With market uncertainty persisting at the beginning of 2012, wealth managers must stay up-to-date on the attitudes, needs and behaviors of their clients. The VIP Forum’s Q1 2012 Consumer Financial Monitor report presents a comparison of wealth levels to provide your firm with current and comprehensive information about global consumer financial sentiment and trends.

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The VIP Forum’s analysis of survey results from 650 global high-net-worth individuals indicates that despite rising global economic concerns at the end of 2011, HNW consumers expressed more positive feelings about their personal finances and engaged in more proactive financial management in the fourth quarter.

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With markets churning across the globe, wealth management executives must stay up-to-speed with the attitudes, desires and behaviors of their clients. The results of The Forum’s third quarter 2011 Consumer Financial Monitor provide a snapshot of financial sentiment and activity of the global HNW population.

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With markets churning on every bit of new news across the globe, it is no surprise that wealth management firms see an opportunity to rebuild client trust by demonstrating the value of their advice. Indeed, to manage through moments like this is exactly why clients pay for advice.  Wealth management firms know they will struggle to meet projected revenue growth goals of 15% without client confidence in their advisory propositions.

To help Forum members identify the must-do’s (and don’t’s) in the client experience today, we launched a survey of more than 1000 high-net-worth clients working with an advisor.  More specifically, we tested over fifty client experience factors to determine their effect on client loyalty. Interestingly, we found that experience factors contribute to loyalty differently – some kill loyalty, some build loyalty, and some have no impact at all.

An analysis of these loyalty killers and builders reveals that a high-quality client experience today is a confidence-building experience, delivered through three key components: serving to demonstrate competence, tailoring to build trust, and teaching to enable confident decision-making. Delivering on each of these components achieves key emotional outcomes: clients think it is easy to do business with you, clients think you are looking out for their best interest, and clients think you are helping them progress toward their goals.

And those emotional outcomes lead to significant financial benefits for the firm. Clients who believe their firm delivers on the three components of a confidence-building client experience exhibit highly loyal behavior and generate twice as much revenue compared to clients who do not believe their firm meets the bar. Moving clients into a high loyalty zone not only positions firms to capture greater wallet share from these clients, but also results in high levels of client advocacy, leading to new client acquisition

Forum members, learn how leading firms deliver a confidence-building client experience in our new research, Building Loyalty through a High-Quality Client Experience.

Across the first three quarters of 2011, mass affluent individuals have become less positive about their personal finances. According to our global Consumer Financial Monitor, feelings about personal finances have dropped a net 5 percentage points since Q1. Their gloominess is widely shared. Feelings about personal finances have converged around the world as even once robust markets, like Asia, confront slowing growth and rising uncertainty.

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Across the first three quarters of 2011, mass affluent individuals have become less positive about their personal finances. According to our global Consumer Financial Monitor, feelings about personal finances have dropped a net 5 percentage points since Q1. Their gloominess is widely shared. Feelings about personal finances have converged around the world as even once robust markets, like Asia, confront slowing growth and rising uncertainty.

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The News: Nearly 60% of millionaires feel the recent market downturn was based more on emotion than fact.

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Due to the changing profile of high-net-worth clients today, firms are struggling to pinpoint what clients value most in their relationship with a wealth management firm.

The VIP Forum’s survey of high-net-worth clients with greater than 5 million in investable assets in local currency reveals an opportunity to engage in deeper advisory relationships and generate referrals from this high-value segment.

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Last week brought numerous blows to the investor psyche, including a near U.S. government default, a 500-point market drop and the first-ever downgrade of United States debt by Standard & Poor’s, taking the U.S. from a long-standing triple-A rating to AA+.

With the global economy still reeling from last week’s events, the wealth management industry faces a daunting challenge. Such extreme market volatility will undoubtedly cause high-net-worth clients, still scarred from the last economic crisis, to reconsider what constitutes a safe vehicle for their investments. Wealth management firms once again face clients’ rising risk aversion and growing insecurity about where to put their money.

To calm clients’ fears and combat clients’ emotional responses to recent market and economic unrest, consider the VIP Forum’s four recommendations:

• Proactively reach out to clients and give them confidence you are looking out for their best interest. While a proactive call to check-in provides a nice service touch, firms should use these conversations as an opportunity to engage clients in deeper discussions on their true risk tolerance.

• Conduct market-related role play exercises with advisors to identify where they struggle in communicating effectively with clients about economic and market uncertainty.

• Educate advisors on the basics of behavioral finance to help them understand, identify and overcome clients’ irrational biases and innate emotional responses to market uncertainty.

• Engage clients’ in goal-based planning to reframe advisory conversations around achieving life goals rather than short-term investment returns.