The £5.5 trillion question: Is your firm ready for the great wealth transfer?

Our ‘In Focus’ campaign this month explores how younger generations are reshaping the advice landscape, from where they turn for financial guidance to the expectations, priorities and behaviours advisers need to understand.

Karen Barrett, founder and chief executive of Unbiased, highlights the scale of the great wealth transfer and the pressure it is placing on advice firms to rethink how they attract and retain clients across generations.

The much-anticipated ‘Great Wealth Transfer’ is no longer a distant forecast; it is a present and defining reality for the financial advice sector.

With an estimated £5.5 trillion+ set to change hands in the UK over the coming decades, the sheer scale of this transfer is staggering; however, its most profound impact will be on the very nature of financial advice itself.

For financial advisers, this intergenerational wealth transfer presents a dual challenge: not only actively acquiring a new generation of clients who approach wealth and advice in a fundamentally different way, but also retaining the wealth of existing clients as it passes to their heirs.

The question is, are we prepared?

A new definition of financial wellbeing

The first step is to recognise that we are not dealing with a carbon copy of the previous generation.

This is a generation that has grown up in a world of digital access and social transparency. Their financial education has been shaped by a series of macroeconomic difficulties and a barrage of online content, making them more self-directed in their research but also more in need of trusted, expert validation.

Recent Unbiased research revealed that millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, often feel frustrated by their perceived lack of financial progress, driven by high living costs, wage stagnation, and delayed milestones such as homeownership.* Despite this, they are open to proactive financial advice – especially when framed around achievable goals rather than long-term wealth accumulation alone.

As such, this new generation of clients often want an expert guide who can validate their own research, cut through the noise, and provide the sophisticated, behavioural coaching that an algorithm or a TikTok video simply cannot.

Their journey to finding advice also differs, leaning more into a digital-first approach. This means traditional marketing methods will no longer cut it. This demographic will search for a financial adviser almost exclusively online.

At Unbiased, almost 20% of enquiries through the platform currently come from millennials, with ‘financial planning, ‘pensions and retirement,’ and ‘investments’ being the top areas where they’re seeking advice.

While their personal values certainly shape their financial goals, the immediate opportunity for advisers lies in becoming their trusted human validator in a digital world.

Within that context, your most valuable service is providing context, wisdom, and behavioural coaching that empowers clients to make informed decisions with confidence.

Blend digital convenience for reporting and administrative tasks with high-touch, human conversations about their goals, their ambitions, and their fears. That is a service that can never be commoditised.

Bridging the intergenerational divide

The statistics on asset retention are stark.

Industry research consistently shows that an overwhelming majority of beneficiaries, some studies suggest up to 80% , do not stick with their parents’ financial adviser. The primary reason is simple: no relationship exists.

To secure these assets, advisers must evolve their role from being the family adviser to becoming the trusted adviser for the whole family. This begins with proactively bridging the communication gap that often exists around inheritance.

Advisers are uniquely positioned to act as a bridge between generations, initiating the crucial conversations families struggle to have on their own.

You can change this narrative.

Start by offering to include adult children in review meetings or by hosting educational sessions on the fundamentals of estate planning for your clients and their families.

By providing value to the entire family unit, you transform your role from a service provider to an individual to a trusted counsellor to a family. This proactive engagement is the key to not only retaining AUM but also to building a truly multi-generational practice.

Shaping the future of advice

The ‘Great Wealth Transfer’ is already in motion.

The firms that will thrive are those that embrace a dual strategy: proactively engaging the children of existing clients to ensure retention while simultaneously adapting their service model to attract and empower the next wave of new clients.

To achieve this, firms need to:

• Modernise their marketing: Invest in your digital presence. Your visibility in the digital space is no longer optional; it’s essential for attracting new clients.
• Demonstrate value to build trust: Demonstrate your value before a large inheritance lands. This builds trust and proves your worth, making you the natural choice when their wealth grows.
• Start engaging the next generation now: Proactively include the adult children of your current clients in financial review meetings. By building a relationship with them today, you dramatically increase the likelihood of retaining those assets tomorrow.

By understanding the new client mindset, adjusting your marketing approach, and proactively engaging the next generation, you build a resilient, growth-focused, multi-generational practice that is not just ready for the future but actively shaping it.

 About  Karen Barrett  

Karen Barrett is the founder and chief executive of Unbiased, an AI-enabled financial advice platform, empowering people to make confident financial decisions and delivering unrivalled growth for advice firms. In 2024, Barrett was named Great British Entrepreneur of the Year and London Equity-backed Entrepreneur of the Year at the Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards. She also received the Woman of the Year Award in the fintech category at the 2024 Women in Financial Advice Awards.   

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*Unbiased: makemoneyageless.unbiased.co.uk