Software company Northstar recently polled 5,500 wealth managers and found that on a scale of 0 to 80, the average wealth manager scored his firm a 32 in ability to offer best-in-class, holistic and personalized service.Asked how often their firms provide best-in-class holistic and personalized service, the average respondent gave a 1.7 -- somewhere between never and rarely. Although 58% of respondents do spend two-thirds of their days with clients, which is good, most said they could not create custom proposals within an hour and most said they can rarely create complete client profiles or client risk profiles with one system. Few use a single platform that covers the entire wealth management cycle.

Financial advisors surveyed say they cannot generate financial wealth plans nor actionable investment policy statements. Nor can they access a single product catalog that spans all types of wealth management products stored in a consistent format. Nor can they use hierarchy management tools to update household relationships and entitlements, nor access 360-degree views of client data. The list continues.

In short, if this survey is an accurate indicator, wealth managers feel pathetically ill-equipped to serve their customers. Yet wealth management is one of the few bright spots in the current financial services picture. Perhaps it's time to give financial advisors either a long vacation or some new software.