Digital assets are no longer a question of whether European wealth managers will engage with them, but how. To understand what’s actually shaping that engagement, CoinShares and Citywire surveyed 261 wealth management professionals across France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the UK in Q1 2026. Respondents included financial advisers, discretionary investment managers, fund selectors, private bankers, and family office professionals, all verified members of the Citywire Engage panel.
What the data shows
- The management gap is already open. A quarter of European advisers report that more than half of their clients’ digital asset exposure sits outside their management, unmonitored and invisible to the advisory relationship. In the UK, that figure reaches 52%. Clients are not waiting for adviser approval; they are investing independently.
- The blocker is institutional. 61% of advisers work in firms that either restrict digital assets or provide no clear internal guidance. In supported firms, 46% of advisers actively recommend digital assets. In restricted ones, 1% do. The knowledge gap follows the same line: 76% of advisers who feel insufficiently informed work in blocked firms.
- The unlock is regulatory and product-led, not educational. Regulatory recognition of digital assets as a standard asset class (45%) and access to regulated ETPs (43%) are the two conditions advisers say would change their behaviour. Client-facing education tools ranked last, selected by 9%. Among advisers who feel uninformed, regulatory recognition outranks education by a factor of ten.
- Client barriers are real, but they do not explain the gap. Volatility (56%) and speculative nature (52%) are the most cited client-side hesitations. Yet advisers in supported firms report the highest volatility concern and the lowest management gap. Barriers become conversations when the firm permits them; where it does not, they become explanations for exposure that is already sitting outside the advisory relationship.
- Expertise is the non-negotiable issuer criterion. Track record and expertise ranked first at 73% across all five markets, more than twice the weight of competitive fees (31%). Secondary priorities diverge by country, from Germany’s emphasis on fees (47%) to the UK’s investment committee research requirements (33%), but the entry condition is universal.
The full report includes country-level breakdowns, adviser posture analysis, and a detailed examination of what each market needs to move from engagement to recommendation.