Overall, Shepard said that prospective clients were 20% more likely to select an advisor employing model portfolios than an advisor who primarily made all of the investment decisions themselves – as long as the model portfolio concept was appropriately communicated.

Nearly two-thirds of the investors surveyed, 63%, believed that by using a model portfolio, the advisor would be applying a more sophisticated approach to their asset allocation. A similar number, 60%, said that using models would have a positive impact on their overall portfolio.

Two-fifths, 41%, believed the most important benefit to using a model is the incorporation of a full asset management team’s research into their portfolio through an advisor.

Younger generations were especially amenable to the use of model portfolios, with 90% of millennials and 87% of Generation X “extremely accepting” of their advisors if they used a preset investment model portfolio.

“The hardest thing to change is people’s rate of adoption of new things, we know that there are plenty of good models and plenty of good model providers, we know that technology platforms are offering models, rebalancing and all the things you need to deploy model portfolios,” said Shepard. “So why aren’t we seeing higher adoption? I think it’s probably because of advisors’ general view of technology. On the other hand, we know younger generations already use technology as a conduit to a lot of things. They’re more comfortable. They understand the value in having access to all of the best thinking and information to make the best possible choices.”

But according to Shepard, investors weren’t as warm to the idea of merely putting model portfolios into roboadvisors – the presence of a live financial advisor was critical to the end-client’s embrace of models.

Almost all of the respondents said that, whether or not model portfolios were used, a financial advisor was critical as part of their financial success.

Approximately half of the survey’s respondents believed that their advisor was using portfolio models, and 58% said that they were extremely likely to switch to an advisor using model portfolios.

Yet WisdomTree also found that 65% of its survey respondents had a different understanding of model portfolios’ use than reality.

“Most investors don’t really understand the concept behind the words model portfolio, what they do understand is asset allocation,” said Shepard. “There has to be a higher level of education from the financial advisor to the end client.”