Trending
There have been a dozen different reactions to the advance of the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the American economy.
There have been those who have panicked and those who have downplayed the impact. There have been those who were slow to react and those who still refuse to react.
And then there were financial advisors and their reaction to the needs of their clients.
Spectrem’s three-month study about the Covid-19 pandemic – Corona Crash: What Advisors Should Be Saying To Investors Now – examines the impact of the economic reaction to the coronavirus on investors, and the attitudes of investors about the economy going forward. The study also asked investors to rate the performance of their financial advisor in terms of providing guidance in the wake of the stock market crash and other economic factors.
According to the study, almost 40 percent of all investors have a higher regard for their financial advisor as a result of how they approached communication to their clients about the economic and investment environment surrounding the pandemic. However, among investors who consider themselves highly knowledgeable about investing and finances, that percentage climbed to 53 percent. It is those investors who are not very knowledgeable who were less likely (38 percent) to upgrade their opinion of their advisor due to his or her performance surrounding the coronavirus stock market reaction.
In a similar vein, 65 percent of those highly knowledgeable investors considered their financial advisor to be very proactive in the way they handled their client’s investments and portfolios in response to the stock market fall, while only 50 percent of those who are fairly knowledgeable felt that way. Overall, 53 percent agreed their advisor acted in a proactive fashion in response to the immediate needs of the marketplace and their clients.
Approaching the matter from the negative point of view, only 15 percent of investors believed their advisor should have been more attuned to current financial events surrounding the coronavirus pandemic considered.
The segment of investors most likely to state disappointment in their advisor’s understanding of the impact of the pandemic on the stock market were those highly knowledgeable investors (20 percent).
The report, a three-month study which concludes with its final report in May, is available here.
Related: How Investors View 2008 vs. 2020