The Great Wealth Transfer is Already Stress-Testing Your Talent System
“The Great Wealth Transfer” is often framed as a market moment. However, inside financial firms, it is fundamentally a workforce challenge: Can your advisors successfully retain the heirs/beneficiaries? Do you have sufficient advisor capacity to manage the influx of new wealth and clients?
A projected $124T is set to transfer from one generation to the next through 2048, according to Cerulli & Associates ($105T to heirs and $18T to charity, estimated). While this estimate varies based on modeling and time span, the operational reality remains: the client base is shifting, expectations are evolving, and the workforce is aging.
If you manage talent and workforce development in wealth management, this is not background noise. It represents a critical, looming capability gap and a significant challenge for clients and assets under management (AUM) retention.
For HR and compliance leaders, the urgent question is: How do you validate and operationalize nextgen asset management expertise at scale?
The “Great Wealth Leak”
Most firms serve current clients well, but those relationships become precarious during the handoff.
When wealth changes hands, heirs frequently reassess every aspect of the relationship: the advisor, the service model, the fees, the digital experience, and the alignment of values. Practically speaking, a decades-long relationship can be severed in a matter of weeks.
You have likely seen this scenario play out:
- Parents have a strong connection with the advisor
- Heirs barely know the advisor
- The first interaction occurs during a moment of heightened emotion: grief, estate stress, and/or family conflict
- An heir states: “We already have someone we trust.“
This is the start of the “Great Wealth Leak.“ Sometimes it’s a dramatic, “pop!” Other times it’s a slow drift of assets to another advisory firm or advisor.
Some analyses suggest that extreme attrition claims are overstated or highly segmented (by advice model, wealth tier, and relationship depth). Even assuming a lower asset attrition rate, however, the risk remains significant enough that waiting for certainty is a precarious choice.
The Looming Advisor Shortage and Talent Gap
Even if heirs retained every dollar with your firm, the “workforce math“ alone would necessitate action.
McKinsey estimates that about 38% of current financial advisors will retire in the next ten years. This looming capacity crisis, according to McKinsey, is further intensified by the fact that heirs are increasingly looking for younger and female advisors. This demand for new advisors is therefore both generational and gender-specific. While retirement projections may differ, the consistent storyline is that the industry cannot simply “hire its way out.“
Crucially, the wealth manager and financial advisor pipelines are distinct from other talent funnels. The path from training to full productivity is protracted, often complicated by compliance requirements and the need for rigorous licensure and certifications.
As a people leader, you are simultaneously managing two reinforcing problems:
- Retaining heirs, and
- Building sufficient numbers of properly licensed and certified advisors quickly enough.
This combination is precisely why the Great Wealth Transfer constitutes a workforce crisis.
What Younger Clients Expect and Your Service Model May Not Yet Deliver
Preparing for the Great Wealth Transfer is not about chasing a trend; it is about ensuring you are ready to meet the expectations of your (hopefully) new clients. Broadly speaking, younger clients often demand:
- Speed and clarity. This generation, shaped by digital fluency, will expect timely follow-up and transparency.
- An easy digital experience. Having a portal is insufficient; it must be intuitive and seamless.
- Planning that aligns with their lives. Advisors should be prepared to advise on equity compensation, student loan debt, early-stage wealth decisions, career planning, family complexity, and managing multiple accounts across various platforms.
And their values. This cohort of investors holds strong opinions regarding where they are willing to invest their money, whether that focus is on ESG, philanthropy, or private equity.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: often firms attempt to solve these challenges with messaging rather than capability building, proclaiming, “we have a modern platform!” instead of, “our advisors have demonstrable and validated expertise in these new areas.”
Workforce development is critical: this is a capability problem that must be proven to the nextgen client.
Make NextGen Retention a Defined Capability
The coming demand is unambiguous. Preparation for the Great Wealth Transfer should become a defined job requirement, and that requirement must include external validation. This entails identifying the necessary skills, ensuring advisors earn the credentials that signal their expertise, and tying those validated skills to career progression and staffing decisions.
1. New wealth management competencies
Advisors must be comfortable with, and ready for, the topics heirs are likely to raise first: taxes, student debt, early-stage investing, alternative investments, multi-generational planning structures, 529 plans, ESG investing, and more.
2. AI fluency
AI does not retain clients—humans do. However, tools that support the advisor in providing a positive client experience can help. A Human+AI approach can increase responsiveness, communication, and transparency. Technology and training in AI fluency can buy back time for the human work of listening, guiding, and educating.
3. Family dynamics
Inheritance involves more than just finances; it includes grief, complex family dynamics, and more. Advisors require practical experience running family meetings, navigating conflict, and communicating with multiple stakeholders. While these may be framed as “soft“ or “durable“ skills, they are also vital “nextgen client retention” skills.
External Validation Is the Key to Trust and AUM Retention
The transition from one generation of wealth to the next is a moment of profound uncertainty for the heir. Designations and certifications are the most powerful tool to mitigate client anxiety by signaling a comprehensive, independently verified expertise that is relevant to their modern lives.
Credentials cannot stand alone, however. They must be paired with a comprehensive “nextgen advising readiness” career pathway, incorporating mastery of areas such as ESG, behavioral finance, alternative investments, AI-fluency, and family dynamics. Completion of a high-value credential should be made a fundamental requirement for advisors who manage transfer-risk relationships.
Credentials and career readiness send a clear signal to both your clients and your own workforce that you are constructing the framework necessary to successfully navigate the “Great Wealth Transfer.”
The ROI: Credentialing as AUM Retention Infrastructure
Leadership often equates “training“ with “costs.“ Yet, preparing for nextgen clients with validated expertise is not an expense—it is the creation of an AUM retention infrastructure.
The cost to upskill an advisor is modest when compared to the long-term value of maintaining a multi-generational relationship. Furthermore, the benefits of credentials are not merely defensive; they are catalysts for growth:
- Stronger referrals
- Better recruiting outcomes
- Improved succession plans
Certifications and other upskilling are necessary to protect future revenue, not merely an operational expense to support career growth.
Build an Inheritable Relationship
This initiative is larger than isolated training; it is the creation of a lasting client and people retention framework. With trillions of dollars poised to change hands and a large portion of the workforce nearing retirement, the firms that successfully retain nextgen clients, or woo them from competitors, will be the ones whose validated expertise is synonymous with trust.
The next generation won’t inherit the advisor relationship unless the advisor relationship is built to be inherited.
Build a lasting client, AUM, and people retention infrastructure with Kaplan’s new Professional Generational Wealth Transfer Advisor℠ (PGWTA℠) designation. Discover how to make the PGWTA℠ part of your talent strategy. Connect with us.
Your 90-Day AUM and Advisor Retention Roadmap
To immediately begin closing critical skills gaps and securing NextGen clients, this 90-day framework helps HR and L&D leaders go from diagnosing exposure to rolling out a retention infrastructure. This is your roadmap to ensuring your advisors have the proven skills necessary to earn the trust of heirs and beneficiaries.
Days 0–30: Get Clarity & Buy-In
Pinpoint the biggest risks and define what success will look like
- Identify your most-exposed client relationships (where the wealth transfer is likely to happen soon).
- Set a "NextGen Readiness" standard that requires external validation as the final step.
- Audit advisor retirement timelines and pipeline gaps to reframe the urgency for leadership
- Lock in the metrics you’ll use to measure success: Percentage of heirs engaged, advisors who met the validated baseline, and retention rates.
Days 31–60: Launch the “Retention Skills Curriculum”
Get the right training and credentials into your advisor pipelines.
- Run a focused 6–8 week “Credentialing Readiness Sprint” aimed at external validation.
- Design learning paths for new, mid-career, and senior advisors, making a high-value credential the mandatory capstone.
- Implement manager reinforcement (coaching guides, observation checklists, and client-conversation practice sessions.
- Determine which NextGen skills require external, third-party validation to best protect AUM.
Days 61–90: Roll Out, Implement, and Show ROI
Put the new models in place and prove the business case.
- Pilot the credentialing requirement with high-value cohorts to quickly measure and prove AUM retention and impact.
- Create a transition playbook for advisors introducing themselves to heirs, running family meetings, and sharing relationship ownership.
- Formalize a team model for at-risk books of business: pair legacy trust with NextGen fluency and credentialed expertise
- Report on ROI in clear business terms: AUM retained, households engaged, and the advisor capability lift proven by external validation/credentialing.
Written by Kaplan experts, reviewed by Sara Stolberg Berkowicz, Ph.D., CFP®, ABFP℠, CDFA®, CRPC℠, CRPS℠, CSRIC℠, SE-AWMA. Dr. Berkowicz is Chair of the Professional Designations Department and an award-winning professor at the College for Financial Planning®—A Kaplan Company, as well as a published author.
