The Timing Is Personal

We’ve been talking about the great wealth transfer for so long that it can start to sound like something permanently scheduled for next year.

But there’s a reason it hasn’t happened all at once. People are living longer, and many need to plan for decades of their own expenses before they can decide what to pass on. The timing is personal, and it will be different for every family.

That can make the shift feel distant to a product team. I don’t think we have the luxury of treating it that way.

The people who will eventually inherit more responsibility for family wealth are already making financial decisions of their own. And the products they use today are shaping what they’ll expect when they need more complex financial advice.

They may be used to opening an account in minutes, finding an answer without calling someone or seeing their information carry over from one interaction to the next.

If they later begin working with an advisor, they’ll bring those expectations with them, even though the decisions they’re making are much more consequential.

I’m not suggesting that wealth management should work exactly like that. There are good reasons to slow down, explain a decision and bring a person into the conversation. But we should know which steps provide that care and which steps simply ask clients to do work a product could have done for them.

The wealth transfer will happen across many families over many years, but we can start preparing for it now by paying attention to how the next generation already expects technology to work.

First posted on LinkedIn, October 1, 2026.