More than US$60 trillion of wealth in the United States alone will pass into the hands of Gen Z and millennials before 2048, according to Cerulli Associates, a trend that is already disrupting the businesses dedicated to helping the ultra-wealthy preserve and grow their fortunes. Younger heirs feel little loyalty to traditional advisers, prompting banks and wealth managers to rethink hiring, embrace cryptocurrencies, and expand lifestyle perks.
A generation skip in Singapore
Just months before he died last year aged 98, Goh Cheng Liang, one of Singapore’s richest men and the founder of Nippon Paint, made six of his grandchildren billionaires. Worth US$13 billion at his death, Goh skipped a generation with a significant part of his estate, giving his son control of the family business and endowing his grandchildren with financial assets. The beneficiaries include an academic in New York, a charity worker in Bali, and an urban-farming entrepreneur.
“They can then do what they like — buy expensive properties, set up their own businesses or do their own investments — without putting the future of the company at risk,” says Melvyn Goh, founder of consultancy Succession Advisory Partners.
The scale of the shift
The great wealth transfer is a global megatrend. While a large share of wealth is expected to pass first to spouses and older heirs, it will subsequently cascade to younger generations. Rapid developments in artificial intelligence and a flurry of initial public offerings are expected to breed even more millionaires and billionaires, expanding the target population of young, rich clients for money managers.
However, technological advances are enabling the wealthy to be more independent in managing their fortunes, threatening an industry that has relied on long-cultivated human relationships. Cheaper platforms and DIY services have proliferated, adding to fee pressures faced by incumbent wealth managers just as they spend more on their own tech and AI capabilities to keep up.
Missed opportunities and rising competition
Traditional banks and wealth managers missed out on around US$1.5 trillion in assets under advisement between 2022 and 2025 as wealthy clients turned to upstart competitors, according to Capgemini earlier this year. To appeal to this new generation, banks are diversifying into newer asset classes and offering special access to private markets trading strategies.
“All of that costs money, and increases complexity, and doesn’t scale as fast as if you’re just growing what you have,” says Roland Kastoun, U.S. asset and wealth management advisory leader at PwC. Traditional advisers may have little choice but to play catch-up.
“What’s at stake is the future of the industry,” says Chayce Horton of Cerulli. “[Wealth] is going to change hands to people with fundamentally different experiences, preferences, thoughts on money than [those] who currently [have] the wealth…People can increasingly vote with their feet, and vote with their dollars.”
