The Great Wealth Transfer could create meaningful opportunities for financial advisors who prepare early. For those who do not, it could pose a significant risk to their practices.

I​n January 2025, an acquaintance I’ll call Matt Curran lost his father. Curran and his brother inherited a $4 million estate that was managed by an independent RIA. Two weeks after the funeral, Curran received a call from his father’s investment advisor, who introduced himself and offered to serve as Curran’s advisor once his share of the account transferred after the estate settled.

Rather than feel assured, Curran felt angry.

“Never once in the 17 years he was managing my father’s money did the advisor ever contact me or my brother. Not to discuss how he was managing Dad’s money, what it was invested in, or the results he delivered,” Curran recalls.

“Then all of a sudden he calls, thinking that just because Dad worked with him that I’ll want to as well. It seemed like nothing more than a money grab to me. My brother felt the same way when he received a similar call. As soon as we had access to the money, we moved all of it out of that firm. I’m managing my own money at the moment, and my brother is finding his own advisor to manage his.”

Attrition of advisors’ client bases and AUM will become far more common

What happened with the Currans is hardly an isolated incident. According to recent research from Natixis, only 45% of heirs plan to retain their parents’ financial advisor. A different survey conducted by Capgemini puts this potential attrition rate at 81% among high-net-worth individuals.

Advisors who ignore this risk do so at their own peril. Over the next 20 years or so, an estimated $84 to $124 trillion is expected to pass from the Silent Generation and baby boomers to their Generation X, millennial, and Generation Z children and grandchildren.

Sources: Cerulli Associates, CNBC

Many advisors are well aware of this risk. According to the Natixis study, 46% of advisors believe that generational wealth transfer poses a major risk to their business, and 33% have already experienced a significant loss of assets due to generational attrition.

“When a long-standing financial advisory client passes away, their adult children do not automatically become clients of the firm. In many cases, these adult children—now inheritors and decision-makers—may feel little connection to the advisor or the organization, simply because a relationship was never fostered with them. This disconnect introduces a significant risk of losing both the relationship and assets under management,” says Richard Busillo, founder of Above the Line Mentoring.

Stephen Nelson, a partner and senior wealth manager with Mills Wealth Advisors, agrees.

“Most advisors wait until the wealth transfer happens before they try to build a relationship with the kids. By then, it’s too late,” he says.

According to the Natixis study, the primary reason children stay with their parents’ advisor is that they know them and trust their advice. Conversely, 38% of children end this relationship because they either don’t know or don’t trust the advisor.

Source: 2025 Natixis Global Survey of Individual Investors

It’s not enough for advisors to call these children to introduce themselves while their parents are still alive. Cultivating heirs should start long before older clients approach the end of their lives. These interactions need to deliver the kind of value an heir will appreciate.

This is particularly true among younger investors, nearly half of whom rely on financial media and AI to help them make financial decisions. Maggie Bilby, founder and CEO of Gen2 Advisors, believes advisors have a unique opportunity to serve as stewards of their clients’ wealth narratives as well as their assets, passing along the meaning of both to their clients’ children.

“When adult children understand how their parents built their wealth, why it exists, and what it’s meant to protect or enable, continuity follows naturally. Advisors who steward both the numbers and the narrative earn trust across generations, and that trust is what keeps wealth aligned, intact, and enduring.”

Insights from the advisory community: Building relationships early on

Stephen Nelson tries to bring in his clients’ children even when they’re not earning real money.

“They may start as tiny clients, but they get to know us, they like us, and they see firsthand how we help their parents make smart decisions. By the time they inherit anything, the relationship is already built,” he says.

Nelson also stresses that advisors need to go beyond pitching investment management when cultivating relationships with these children.

“Market returns are table stakes. If all you offer is investment management, the kids will take the money somewhere cheaper. You keep the family by helping them make better decisions around tax, timing, equity compensation, and their own business or career. When they see you as the family CFO, not just their parents’ advisor, they stay.”

Raymond Gettins, a director with United Advisor Group, agrees.

“The advisors who have the best success establishing relationships with the children of their best clients take a page out of the family office playbook. For children early in their careers, they provide guidance and teach them how to save and invest. For high-net-worth clients who want to use some of their wealth to encourage family philanthropy, advisors often white label donor-advised funds so they can be personally involved in helping both parents and children fulfill their charitable giving objectives.”

Advisors who target the children of wealthy clients need to make sure the parents are on board with this kind of outreach. Before reaching out to heirs, advisors should strive to get permission from their clients first.

“Financial planning is an inherently personal and confidential process, usually conducted strictly between the advisor and the primary client, the parent. While privacy must always be respected, my experience has shown that engaging the client’s family early is the most effective way to transition from being the parents’ advisor to serving as a trusted financial resource for the entire family,” says Busillo.

When parents give their blessing for advisors to reach out to their children, simply contacting them to introduce themselves is not an effective approach, especially if the advisor has never interacted with these children before.

That’s why Allen Jenson, principal advisor with Caliber Financial Group, suggests that rather than cold-contacting these children, advisors should first try to involve them in their parents’ wealth discussions.

“We are constantly trying to involve the next generation in a variety of ways. We actively ask clients if they would like to involve their children in the financial-planning process and have them join our meetings. And we always welcome these children to visit our office just to get to know us on an informal basis,” he says.

Some advisors make engaging heirs part of their onboarding process when signing up their parents as new clients.

Three Creeks Capital Management offers heirs meetings as part of its initial financial-planning processes, according to founder and president Todd J. Gourno.

“In these meetings we cover five main topics: the parents’ wishes; how the estate is structured; how taxes will impact the inheritance; the decisions the kids will need to make; and management of their parents’ digital footprints, including passwords and social media accounts,” says Gourno. 

To cultivate relationships with heirs at a young age, Frank Germano, the founder of Germano Financial, has offered off-site financial boot camps to promote financial literacy among his clients’ teenage and adult children. Response from both generations has been positive.

“Many of those ‘kids’ are now successful professionals, clients of mine in their own right, and active participants in joint planning sessions with their parents. These boot camps were about connecting generations, strengthening families, and ensuring that my clients’ legacies endure in capable hands.”

The changing nature of the client-advisor relationship with new generations

Understanding what children of different ages want from financial advisors is crucial to successful engagement efforts.

Younger investors may not be looking for advisors who offer only traditional money management. They’re much more interested in sustainable investments, active ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and alternative investments than their parents were. They develop these preferences through the information they search for and consume on social media and other digital platforms.

Source: FINRA Investor Education Foundation

Advisors need to acknowledge and accommodate these interests. They should also be willing to take the extra step of helping younger clients assess their overall financial fitness and identify strategies to address their near- and long-term financial and investment goals. Annual portfolio review meetings aren’t enough. Frequent, value-added client touches are key to building and sustaining trust with heirs.

Advisors also need to adapt their practices to fit younger heirs’ mostly online lifestyles. Robust digital tools can help younger clients access their accounts on their smartphones and communicate with their advisor and relationship manager through text and instant messaging.

The bottom line is that advisors who want to keep their older clients’ assets in-house need to treat their heirs as prospects. Converting these prospects will be difficult if advisors don’t establish connections early and demonstrate their value well before the wealth transfer takes place.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and the sources cited and do not necessarily represent the views of Proactive Advisor Magazine. This material is presented for educational purposes only.