Private banks have amateurish social media strategies, often failing to establish anything more than a token presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, according to research from investment portal assetinum.
For its report, assetinum examined the world's 50 biggest private banking and wealth management institutions' social media activities and scored them out of 100.
A third of the companies studied do not have active profiles on Facebook, including Goldman Sachs, an investor in the social networking giant. Of those that do, half did not react to a test request by assetinum, suggesting "insufficient interaction," says the firm.
Twitter accounts have been set up by 42 of the 50 banks but often this is mere "tokenism" with only 26 reacting actively to users that tweet them. Barely half have up-to-date YouTube channels and only 15 use the medium to talk about wealth management issues. An impressive 49 have LinkedIn profiles but only 14 present additional content and eight cultivate interaction with users.
Assetinum also found that only 19 banks have their own blogs with just six of these offering any interaction with users. Less than half have sites optimised for smartphones while just 14 have apps.
Overall, the companies scored an average of 43 out of 100 possible points, although several received respectable totals of over 80, led by Citi, Société Générale and ABN Amro. Generally, smaller players scored worst, with Rothschild, Bank Sarasin and Bank Jacob Safra making up the bottom three.
Whether consumers want to communicate with financial providers through social media is moot though. A separate survey of 2000 people from the UK, US, Spain and Germany for BT and Avaya shows only five per cent see social media as an appropriate forum for financial conversations and some 60% wouldn't use Twitter, Facebook or similar sites to resolve customer service issues in banking.