Portable loyalty – Two thirds of wealthy clients would follow their banker out of the door

Agility Research & Strategy · 10 September 2026

Two-thirds of high-net-worth respondents across Australia, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore say they would leave their firm if their assigned relationship manager moved to another institution, and that same group is the one already shopping: indeed, 67% of them are looking for a new private bank, against 54% of the respondents who would stay. Three-quarters already use two or more private banks in their own market.

Monday morning in Singapore, and the resignation has been forwarded twice before 9am. A senior relationship manager is going to a competitor a few streets away.

By mid-morning, the coverage lead has the affected names on one screen and is ranking them the way such lists always get ranked: by assets, then by tenure, then by how warm the manager seemed with each family.

The calls go out in that order. Nobody sorts the list the other way, i.e. by which of those families was already looking for another bank before the letter arrived.

Two-thirds of respondents would follow the manager, and two-thirds of those are already looking

Respondents who would follow their manager out the door are not a minority view.

In WealthLens™ 2026, 66% say that if their assigned relationship manager moved to another institution, they would change their main private banking or wealth management firm too.

The second figure sends them somewhere else.

Among the 929 respondents who would follow, 67% are already looking for a new private banking relationship, against 54% of the 471 who would stay with the firm.

So the compensation budget set aside for manager retention would serve to retain, disproportionately, the accounts with the shortest expected life.

And those relationships were already in play before the resignation.

The group that would stay trusts the advisor just as much

The group that would stay with the firm trusts the advisor just as much as the group that would leave with the manager.

On a separate battery, 74% of the would-follow group agree with the statement “I trust my wealth advisor”. So do 74% of the group that would stay. There is no gap.

The matching figures remove the lever the retention budget assumes. If trust in the person separated the two groups, a bank could build it and pay for it. Trust does not separate them.

We would read the would-follow answer as a report of a low cost of leaving: the banking client who has one client-manager relationship worth keeping has fewer reasons to sit still than the client who has a bank worth keeping.

Fully delegated mandates sit with the respondents most likely to follow

Fully delegated mandates are meant to be hardest relationships to lift, and they sit with the respondents most likely to follow.

Among respondents who use an advisor, 10% of the would-follow group say their wealth manager makes the investment decisions for them, against 2% of the would-stay group. Both figures rest on the advisor-using part of each group, 771 respondents and 397.

Delegation carries the fee with it when the manager leaves. It also carries the planning assumption that lets a bank forecast a year ahead on an account it does not expect to have to retain.

We would read the pairing as one fact: the client who has handed over the decision has handed it to a person, and says so when asked what happens if that person leaves.

Neither bank count nor call frequency will find these accounts

Identifying how many banks these clients already use will not find these accounts.

Two or more private banks is the ordinary arrangement, and the share runs slightly higher among respondents who would stay with the firm, at 79%, than among those who would follow, at 72%. Multi-banking is where everyone is standing.

Call frequency will not find them either. The would-follow and would-stay groups sit level on how often they interact with their primary private bank. Geography does not narrow the field: the four markets answer alike on the headline measure.

Nor will the departure explain the reason for the shopping around. Among the 870 respondents looking for a new private banking relationship, a departing advisor is one of seven reasons offered, and none of the seven is named by more than a third of them.

Fees, performance, service, access, digital, and values all sit in the same band. What a respondent says they would do is also not a record of what they did.

Retain the account before the resignation happens

The account is what needs defending, and the defense cannot wait for a resignation.

One in five respondents in the would-follow group is looking inside the next six months, against one in eight of the would-stay group. A coverage lead has the same quarter to work with whether or not anybody hands in a letter.

Two moves follow: rank the annual review list by whether the client is looking rather than by how warm the manager is with them, and have somebody other than the relationship manager ask the question.

Then take the fully delegated accounts first, because those have the biggest financial impact, and put a second named person alongside every delegating client this year, somebody whose own resignation would not take the mandate with it.

For the compensation committee, the reading is narrower than it looks. Paying to keep a manager buys time on accounts that were already at risk, but it is not the only measure.

The price of a retained manager is better set against the third of the would-follow group who were not looking, because those are the relationships the compensation helps retain.

Sort the list by who was already looking, and the quarter’s retention spend goes to the accounts a payment can still hold. Back to Monday morning: the list is the right list, sorted by the wrong column.

Source note: WealthLens™ 2026, Agility Research & Strategy; single 2026 collection point; Australia, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Total n=1,400, comprising Australia n=300, China n=500, Hong Kong n=300, and Singapore n=300; subgroup bases would follow the manager n=929, would stay with the firm n=471, respondents using an advisor n=1,168 of whom n=771 would follow and n=397 would stay, and respondents looking for a new private banking relationship n=870.