U.S. Bank tops Edward Jones, Vanguard and UBS on J.D. Power's client survey; Equitable, TIAA and LPL get lowest scores

Rising stock values lifted wealth management clients' grades for the largest firms in the industry, with a new winner of J.D. Power's Full-Service Investor Satisfaction Study benefitting the most.

U.S. Bank jumped all the way to the top spot in the research and consulting firm's closely followed annual report card for the wealth management industry from No. 14 last year, J.D. Power said in releasing the results reflected in the below slideshow on March 21. Edward Jones, Vanguard, UBS, Raymond James and Stifel respectively took the next highest ratings, while Equitable Advisors, TIAA, LPL Financial, Lincoln Financial Group and Prudential Advisors came in at the bottom of the two dozen firms tracked in the client poll. Overall, clients boosted the satisfaction scores based on seven factors by an average of eight points from the prior year. The stock and bond slumps of 2022 had pushed down their scores sharply last year.

"It is conventional wisdom that investor satisfaction tracks closely with stock market performance, but for advisors who want to build long-term, sustainable relationships that can weather good markets and bad, they will need to build a deeper level of engagement with clients," Craig Martin, the global head of wealth and lending intelligence at J.D. Power, said in a statement. "This is especially true among the younger segment of investors who show lower levels of client loyalty than investors in other generational groups. Advisors will need to adjust their approach to meaningfully connect with younger investors or risk a major outflow of assets in coming years."

Indeed, at least 36% of millennials with more than $1 million in investable assets told J.D. Power that they "probably will" or "definitely will" switch wealth management firms in the next year. About 70% of them already use a secondary investment firm, which is a much higher percentage than older affluent clients. And, regardless of age, clients are using investment technology frequently: 86% have logged into their firm's web portal in the past year and 60% are accessing their account through their company's mobile application.

The findings follow several recent studies reflecting the growing wealth of millennials and Generation Z investors and the importance of deploying technology tools that meet their expectations as the industry confronts the perennial challenge of maintaining multigenerational relationships and expanding access to advice. The J.D. Power study suggests the industry has much more work to do on all those fronts.

Many younger prospective clients may also be "looking for a more personalized relationship at this point" after using self-directed investment apps in their first forays into investing, according to Dinon Hughes, a financial consultant with Portsmouth, New Hampshire- and Kennebunk, Maine-based Nvest Financial. Hughes is completing the professional experience requirement to become a certified financial planner after passing the CFP exam, and he joined the firm in 2022 as an intern in his senior year of college.

Since keeping clients' kids with the firm is "top of mind for us," Hughes often works with the younger generation of customers whose parents are clients of the more senior advisors at the firm, he noted. The industry's traditional arrangement usually calls for the advisor to "help your kids out too" as a kind of "fringe benefit" to the client, Hughes said in an interview.

"There's definitely a disconnect there if the advisor is their parents' age," he said. "It's a communication disconnect, a technology disconnect. The advisor isn't communicating with that next-generation client the way that they want to be communicated with."

To see which full-service investment firms fared the best in J.D. Power's annual survey, scroll down the slideshow. For results from prior years, see our slideshows from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018.

Note: Only firms with at least 100 customers in the poll received individual customer satisfaction grades on a 1,000-point scale based on the following seven factors, which were weighted in this order: "trust; people; products and services; value for fees; ability to manage wealth how and when I want; problem resolution; and digital channels."

Between January 2023 and January 2024, J.D. Power spoke with 9,951 investors who said they work with an advisor or team of advisors.