The Great Wealth Transfer: Preemptive Measures

Key Takeaways

• Cerulli projects $105.3 trillion will pass to heirs between 2024 and 2048, with millennials receiving roughly $46 trillion—about 44 percent of the total.
• Family meetings are the single most-cited effective action for building intergenerational wealth plans, named by 89 percent of HNW-focused advisors — well ahead of educating family members (69 percent) or inclusive charitable planning (36 percent).
• Sixty-four percent of HNW practices say clients’ discomfort sharing financial information with their children is a top barrier to wealth transfer planning. 
• The share of wealth management executives citing intergenerational wealth transfer as their firm’s greatest business challenge grew from one in five in 2019 to more than one in three in 2024. 

U.S. household wealth has nearly doubled since the Great Financial Crisis, from $79 trillion to an estimated $154 trillion by the end of 2023. Cerulli Associates now projects $123.7 trillion of that wealth will change hands intergenerationally between 2024 and 2048—$105.3 trillion to heirs and $18.4 trillion to charity—with millennials alone in line for roughly $46 trillion. Chayce Horton and Matt Zampariolo of Cerulli argue that the firms best positioned to retain those assets are the ones building relationships with next-generation and spousal heirs now, not waiting for the transfer to happen. 

Drawing on Cerulli’s 2024 Private Wealth Management Executive Study, the authors show which practices move the needle: family meetings, family education programs, and inclusive charitable planning rank well above technical tools like family investment policy statements. They also flag a widening gap between how advisors think about this transfer and how prepared their firms actually are.