Tonight:
4°c
Almost half the world's wealthy are planning to switch banks this year as a result of the credit crunch.
The wealth management industry has been forced to rethink its strategy after a wide range of products imploded during the financial meltdown and governments succeeded in challenging lucrative offshore tax arrangements.
Individuals are now looking for more secure havens for their cash and demanding better tax advice. They are also concentrating their wealth in fewer hands and instead of employing several private banks now choose to stick with just one.
A report from Dow Jones Wealth Bulletin shows there is a huge chasm between how wealth managers believe they are doing and how their clients feel they have performed with 80% of wealth managers rating their own performance as either good or very good while only 30% of their clients concurred.
A further 30% rated their wealth manager's performance as poor or very poor.
Analysts believe that as much as $1trillion (£612 billion) of the total $12.9 trillion in the hands of wealth managers shifted home last year.
UBS, the world's largest wealth fund manager, saw an outflow of $95billion as clients left because of the bank's exposure to toxic assets and its spat with the US government over offshore accounts it set up for American citizens.
