Financial advisers spend 23 hours a week on the Internet visiting industry and fund manager websites as well as social networking, a survey by kasina found.
"Advisers really are incorporating the Internet into what they do in the week. It's not that they're either on the Web or they're with clients; they're reading The Wall Street Journal and emailing clients and asset managers," said Lee Kowarski, principal at the New York consulting firm.
"We found that advisers with more assets spend more time on the Internet because it makes them more effective," Kowarski said.
Beside their computers, 54% of advisers use mobile devices to access work-related information outside of email, and 23% of advisers plan to do so in the next year. The survey, released July 22, said 71% of advisers make product decisions based on the websites they visit.
Almost all advisers, 94%, regularly visit their firm's intranet.
"This shows there's a need for asset managers to provide information to advisers via their intranets as well as through their own websites," Kowarski said.
Eighty-five percent of advisers said they visit asset managers' sites at least occasionally.
While they are happy to forage for information, though, many advisers don't like proactivity from their information sources.
At 55%, over half of advisers say they're getting too much email from asset managers — advisers receive eight emails on average per day in total.
"Some are comfortable with it, but other advisers feel like they're getting spammed," Kowarski said.
"From our qualitative research, advisers say many of the emails they receive aren't personalized or even targeted. If an email helps them with client communications that's helpful, but many advisers are turned off by mass communications."
"The key message is that advisers care a lot what assets managers provide online and it impacts who they do business with," Kowarski said. "However, advisers have less appetite for email, so the lesson for asset managers is to get their content wherever advisers visit — their intranets and asset managers' websites. Advisers are looking for content they can share with each other and with their clients."
