Consumers have multiple goals with retirement coming back into focus. The Attitudes & Sentiment: Goal-Centric Consumers, the Advisory Relationship and Dreams of Retirement report provides key insights into U.S. consumer sentiment, key concerns, financial goals, investing experience, and investing and savings attitudes to shape financial products, advice and messaging. 

The report is written by subject matter experts who combine operating experience in retail finance with technology development and consumer packaged goods innovations. The ideas and analysis of this insight module are drawn from the latest fielding of the Hearts & Wallets Investor Quantitative™ Database (IQ™ Database), recognized as the largest single dataset on U.S. retail consumer attitudes, behaviors and buying patterns, with over 45,000 U.S. households.  

• An analysis of consumer attitudes reveals that understanding what a financial advisor does is a necessary first step toward receptivity to an advisory relationship. 
  
• Among firms that lead in customers who say they know what a financial advisor does are Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab. As a “type,” bank customers have the lowest understanding. 
  
• The desire to leave a legacy is at an all-time high. 
  

Marketing, product and advice/digital design professionals will benefit from the actionable data and insights in this report to: 

• Build upon current positive consumer sentiment about the financial future by identifying groups who are most receptive to new products or relationships and target appropriately. 
  
• Recognize and track the consumers of consumers with $2M+ as a potential bellwether on the economy and market tolerance. 
  
• Develop tools and products that incorporate human capital to address increasing consumer interest in job security. 
• Expand multi-goal planning – consumers want this! 
  
• Address specific unmet needs of consumers to enhance understanding of what a financial advisor does, develop consumer-centric legacy solutions, create compelling connections between banking and investing, and reestablish understanding of what asset managers do. 
  

The Hearts & Wallets Investor Quantitative™ Database (IQDB) is the comprehensive resource for understanding and analyzing behaviors and attitudes of retail savers and investors. With over 1,000 fields and derived variables, the breadth and depth of topics covered is designed with decades of hands-on experience in the marketing, product, service and research functions it serves. The database covers consumers of all age and wealth segments, with over 5,000 annual responses to an online survey fielded mid-year since 2010. The large sample size of over 45,000 U.S. households permits sizing and profiling of virtually any demographic, behavioral or attitudinal definition for consumer groups. Its national weighting methodology allows for comparisons across years and customer/shareholder bases of leading firms.