Hybrid clients are 67% more likely to consider leaving their advisor, Greenwich finds

Clients who hold both an advisor-led account and a self-directed platform are 67% more likely to consider leaving their advisor than advisor-only clients, a Coalition Greenwich study found. The Coalition Greenwich Voice of Client – 2026 Wealth Study, reported by InvestmentNews on October 15, found 15% of hybrid clients said they were actively considering or would consider switching their primary advisor, compared with 9% of advisor-only clients.

The survey drew on more than 5,000 individual investors in the United States and defines affluent consumers as those with up to $5 million in investable assets. Roughly 22% of them use both a full-service advisor and a self-directed account. About two-thirds of affluent consumers used a financial advisor in 2026, and approximately 54% used self-directed accounts over the same period.

Kieran Bol, director of research and analytics in wealth management at Crisil Coalition Greenwich and co-author of the report Advised and self-directed: Winning the hybrid wealth client, said: "The stereotype of a self-directed investor is a young consumer who wants to bet on the market. In reality, relative to investors who rely solely on full-service advisors, those who use both advisor-led and self-directed accounts have a similar appetite for risk and are roughly the same age - with an average age of 63."

The study lists four motivations for using both types of accounts: enjoying stock picking, managing costs, diversifying across account types, and holding assets such as cryptocurrency outside an advisor-serviced portfolio. Hybrid clients are more price-sensitive, less convinced of the value of holistic advice, and three times as likely as advisor-only clients to be open to robo-advice.

The research cautions against reading a self-directed account as automatic evidence of a deteriorating relationship. The practical step is segmentation: find out which clients hold accounts elsewhere, and ask what the outside account is for before treating the relationship as at risk.