Citigate Dewe Rogerson & PAM Insight 2014 Social Media Forum
Last week Citigate Dewe Rogerson hosted the second annual Social Media Forum in association with PAM Insight, publishers of thewealthnet and eprivateclient. A freshly assembled panel of social media experts including the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), KPMG, Ledbury Research, Charles Russell Speechlys, SVM Asset Management, and Financial Social Media came together on the 20th November to discuss the use of social media in the wealth management sector.
Hosted at the London office of law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, the event was attended by around 60 industry professionals, all of whom were looking to better understand best practice on social media engagement.
As with last year’s inaugural event, PAM Insight conducted research ahead of the Social Media Forum to gain industry specific insight. The research revealed that, despite regulatory and compliance concerns, the use of social media has increased significantly in the wealth management sector over the past 12 months.
According to the research, the most popular social media channel used by wealth management firms is LinkedIn (83%), followed by Twitter (54%) and then Facebook and video channels, both used by a quarter (23%) of all respondents.
Despite this increase in activity, it seems that wealth management firms are still experiencing a number of barriers when using social media as a form of communication. With two in five (41%) stating that regulation was their main concern with the use of social media, it came as no surprise that Richard Lawes from the FCA and a member of this year’s panel received a lot of questions from the floor.
Quoted in a follow-up article on thewealthnet, Lawes said: “We have been talking about an investigation into social media for some time and we have been monitoring its development closely.”
“We issued some brief guidance in 2010 which we rather quaintly referred to as ‘new media’.
“Monitoring the industry and its use, the observation we found was there was an issue about compliance and regulation. It wasn’t so much that there are a lot of difficult rules, more that people weren’t sure where the FCA stood.
“These were the main drivers for this latest piece of work. We have received 60 responses which, compared to other consultations, is quite significant.”
Other barriers faced by the industry include concerns about lack of control over what content is communicated (65%) along with a lack of resources (67%). Despite these barriers, it is clear that social media usage in the wealth management industry is only on the increase with almost three quarters (72%) planning to increase spending over the coming 12 months.
The full breakdown of results, including perceived benefits, client desires and social media plans for 2015 have been published by PAM Insight Group Editor Tristan Blythe here.
We would like to thank the Social Media Forum panel: Richard Lawes, FCA; Colin McLean, managing director of SVM Asset management; Duncan Lamont, Partner at Charles Russell Speechlys; Bridget Greenwood of Financial Social Media; Jeanie Gu, KPMG management consultant and David Barks of Ledbury Research. To read some of their thoughts following the event – please click here.