The founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, says advisory firms also need to pass along the client relationship itself, something he believes many firms are unprepared to do.

Gold points to the scale of generational transfer now underway, with an estimated $84 to $120 trillion expected to move between generations over the next two decades and the peak of that shift arriving around 2026. Heirs receiving that wealth, he notes, often have different expectations, communication habits and priorities than the family members who originally built it.

Bridging Generations

To address that gap, Michael Gold Westport says more advisory firms are hiring younger advisors specifically to build rapport with Millennial and Gen Z heirs, pairing them with senior staff who hold the institutional history of a family’s finances. He describes this as building multigenerational teams rather than relying on a single advisor to carry a relationship across decades and generational transitions.

At Gold Family Wealth, that approach sits alongside a broader emphasis on continuity. Gold argues that families want confidence the people advising them will remain engaged well beyond the current generation, and that younger team members need genuine authority rather than a token presence on calls. His Westport firm serves households with $20 million to $150 million in net worth, a range he says requires the kind of sustained, coordinated attention that a rotating cast of advisors cannot reliably provide.

Gold expects firms that fail to build this generational bridge to lose assets as wealth changes hands, regardless of how strong their original advisory relationship was. For Michael Gold, keeping a family’s business through a transfer is as much a test of a firm’s structure as its investment performance.

He adds that younger advisors brought in for this purpose need real decision-making authority early on, not just a seat at family meetings. Without that, he says, heirs quickly sense the difference between a firm genuinely preparing for the next generation and one merely gesturing toward it. See related link for more information.

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