Two years after crash, wealthy still leery of financial advisers

Though improving, rich investors’ trust and confidence in their advisers and financial institutions still lags far behind what it was before the credit crisis and the stock market free fall of September 2008, according to an annual report on the world’s millionaires. In 2009, only 59% of the millionaires surveyed for the Capgemini World Wealth Report said they had regained trust in their financial advisers, while 56% said they had the same feelings about their wealth management firms and financial institutions. Granted, that represents an improvement from 2008, when 46% of millionaires said they had lost trust in their main adviser, and an equal percentage in their wealth management firm. But the percentages are still far below levels seen before the credit crisis, said Bertrand Lavayssiere, managing director of global financial services at Capgemini. Typically, those years would have seen 85% of surveyed millionaires express trust and confidence in their adviser, and about 80% feel the same way towards their financial institution, said Mr. Lavayssiere, who spoke on Tuesday morning in Manhattan at a meeting about the report, which is produced along with Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Rich investors remain anxious about investing, he noted. “Volatility is still there, and yields are not back. There are still a lot of question marks.” Millionaires may still have uneasy sentiment toward advisers and their firms, but the rich as a whole are doing far better. Their global ranks swelled 17.1% last year, reaching 10 million. That’s about 100,000 fewer than in 2007.