The majority of banks still deal with social media in a clumsy manner, according to research by assetinum. The investment information portal examined the world's 50 biggest private banking and wealth management institutions' social media activities, scoring them out of 100.

Citibank lead the way, ahead of Société Générale, ABN AMRO, Barclays, Wells Fargo, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Vanguard who all achieved at least 70 points. On average, however, social media competence is poor. "For a surprisingly high amount of banks a convincing social media strategy is still not distinguishable," says Benjamin Manz, managing partner, assetinum.com. "And this despite the fact that bank clients worldwide wish for more transparency and information content – not least because of digital media."

A third of those under examination did not have an active Facebook profile and that included Facebook investor Goldman Sachs. It was a better state of affairs regarding Twitter with 42 out of 50 banks having Twitter accounts, although only 26 actively reacted to users' tweets. All banks – apart from bottom-placed Bank J. Safra – had a LinkedIn profile, set up to serve the HR departments. However, a mere 14 presented additional content and eight encouraged interaction with users. Just 19 banks had their own blog and only in six cases was interaction between the users and the bank possible. Less than half had sites optimised for smartphones while 14 had apps.

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