Wealth management firms could convert so-called do-it-yourself investors into full-service clients — if they can satisfy younger customers, according to J.D. Power’s latest annual survey.
In the “2025 U.S. Investor Satisfaction Study,” the business research, consulting, data and analytics firm presented separate customer service grades for DIY customers and for “advised” wealth management clients working with a financial advisor. The results in the cardshow below reflect how the all-encompassing area of industry practice management known as “client experience” plays a crucial role in winning and retaining business. Firms of all sizes regularly examine how factors such as technology, client meetings and family dynamics affect their base.
“Our service has to be a 10 out of 10 because we’re not necessarily a recognizable name on Wall Street, per se,” said Jacqueline “JaQ” Campbell, founder of Southfield, Michigan-based Alexander Legacy Private Wealth. “Where we get satisfaction and where we’re able to really shine is our client experience.”
Each firm across every channel of the industry strives for the top satisfaction marks from its customers.
For the advised clients, Raymond James jumped to No. 1 in the rankings for this year from the fifth spot last year, beating out rivals like U.S. Bank, Edward Jones, Ameriprise and Morgan Stanley.
In the DIY category, Vanguard took the top spot over Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price, Acorns and Stash after other firms grabbed higher ratings last year.
In an indication of how seriously the industry takes J.D. Power’s investor satisfaction survey (which the firm redesigned this year), both Raymond James and Vanguard posted press releases trumpeting their respective No. 1 spots shortly after the research firm announced them.
Study shows self-directed clients could transition to full advice
Fundamentally, wealth management “is about a transfer of trust” to a company from customers who have heard horror stories about figures like Bernie Madoff, said Mike Byrnes, founder of advisor growth consulting firm Byrnes Consulting. Satisfaction surveys in general and advisor rankings in particular often generate customer leads directly, he noted.
“There are all kinds of different rankings out there. Some carry more weight in the industry, and there are some compliance restrictions with some of them because of their methodology,” Byrnes said. “If a ranking can help that prospect feel more comfortable with hiring an advisor, I would say I’m all in favor of the firm trying to get highly ranked.”
In that competitive environment, the DIY investors told J.D. Power that many of them could soon fall into the prospective full-service client category. At least 27% said they’re likely to hire an advisor in the next year, with a higher share of 37% among those in the millennial and Generation X age groups. To wealth management firms that can collect a higher ongoing fee from a full-bore client relationship, those numbers loom large.
“For younger generations of investors who’ve been exposed to digital, human and hybrid forms of investment advice during the past several years, the decision to lean into DIY or advised channels is rarely ever an either/or scenario,” Kapil Vora, the senior director of wealth intelligence at J.D. Power, said in a statement. “Increasingly, investors are using several approaches, and many younger investors who would traditionally have fallen into the DIY category are actively looking to work with human advisors. However, it is no longer enough to have a brand legacy or an array of products and services; a company must deliver value and make the experience easy for investors.”
At the individual advisory practice level, those generational trends mean that advisors must connect with clients’ entire families in order to “extend our services to their children,” Campbell said. “They’re like, ‘Alexander Legacy doesn’t care just about me, they care about my whole family, they care about my whole community,'” she added. “That allows the stickiness, and that also allows, hopefully, those children to see us as a value to their family.”
Scroll down the slideshow for J.D. Power’s investor satisfaction rankings, with the DIY group first, followed by the full-service clients. To see which firms got the highest scores in last year’s DIY investor survey, click here. For results from prior years in the full-service investor satisfaction study, see our slideshows from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018.
Consumer research, consulting, data and analytics firm J.D. Power combined its previously separate full-service and self-directed investor surveys to create the “J.D. Power U.S. Investor Satisfaction Study.” 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: “digital channels; ease of doing business; people; product and service offerings; resolving problems or complaints; trust; and value for fees paid.” The company spoke with 7,876 advised investment clients and 3,723 DIY investors between January and December last year.
Its rankings included a disclosure that they are “based on numerical scores, and not necessarily on statistical significance.”
