Do Wealth Managers Understand Codes of Conduct and Their Ethical Dilemmas?

How do wealth managers understand and comply with the social norms embedded in banks’ codes of conduct (CoC), and how do they cope with ethical dilemmas? To answer these and related questions, we conduct a nonincentivized online survey with wealth management employees of the Swiss legal entity of a large multinational bank. We used situational judgment questions to estimate the comprehension and the level of expected adherence to the CoC principles. We show that framing questions under the label of “Financial Security” increased response accuracy and that employees’ honesty helped guide their decision-making toward integrity in ethical dilemmas.