For a second consecutive year, attorney Michael Ettinger was named as Five Star Best in Client Satisfaction Wealth Manager.
Westchester Magazine formed a partnership with Crescendo Business Services, an independent research firm, to find out which wealth managers successfully satisfied key client satisfaction criteria and overall scored the highest in client satisfaction. (Click here to learn more about what it means to be named a five star wealth manager).
Cresendo surveyed, by mail and phone, 32,000 high-net-worth residents. An additional 3,750 surveys were sent to financial services industry professionals.
On the surveys, recipients were asked to evaluate only wealth managers whom they knew through personal experience, and to evaluate them based upon nine criteria: customer service, integrity, knowledge/expertise, communication, value for fee charged, meeting of financial objectives, post-sale service, quality of recommendations and overall satisfaction.
Only original surveys – no copies – returned in their specially designed envelopes were accepted as valid. Both positive and negative evaluations were included in the scoring. Only wealth managers with five years of experience in the financial services industry were considered.
Next, each wealth manager was reviewed for regulatory actions, civil judicial actions and customer complaints as reported by FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) and other regulatory agencies.
Then, before finalizing the list, wealth managers were reviewed by a blue-ribbon panel. The blue-ribbon panel was comprised of individuals from within the financial services industry. Although panelist comments were incorporated into the final score, safeguards were built into the review process to reduce the ability of panel members to influence the composition of the final list on the basis of company affiliations.