Expertise is in the Eye of the Beholder – Financial Advisor Evaluations and Client Satisfaction as a Result of Advisor Recommendations

Clients’ satisfaction with financial advice provided by professional advisors depends on how this advice has fulfilled their expectations and goals. However, once a recommendation is made, a client is unable to predict and evaluate the real financial outcome of the advisor’s proposal. In such a case, she/he can base her/his assessment on the characteristics ascribed to the financial advisor: her/his epistemic authority (competence) and level of caring. Additionally, clients expect to receive a “tailor-made” solution that takes into account her/his individual needs and characteristics. In the present study, we asked participants to evaluate financial experts who had recommended risky vs safe investments. The recommendations were congruent or incongruent with the clients’ risk tolerance (high vs low). The kind of recommendation influenced the participants’ evaluations of the advisors (and as a result, the clients’ perceived satisfaction) only for low-risk tolerance clients. For these clients, investment recommendations that were not adjusted to their levels of risk tolerance led to lower evaluations of the advisors and consequently to lower evaluation of satisfaction with their visits. These lower evaluations regarded both dimensions: the interpersonal aspect (caring) and competence in the field of finance (epistemic authority). Such incongruence between risk tolerance and the riskiness of the recommendation did not affect high-risk tolerance clients’ advisor evaluations.