Advisers positioning for USD100 trillion wealth transfer
To run a successful financial or risk advice practice in the 21st Century requires an exhaustive skillset spanning administration, compliance, product, relationship building, succession planning and technology adoption, to name a few. Key individuals and representatives must also begin thinking about peripheral issues such as intergenerational wealth transfer that will see most practices advising clients with very different expectations.
A structural inflection point
The future of financial advice, hybrid advice models and why retail investors matter featured during the final presentation of the first InsureTalk event for 2026. Higgo van Biljon, Head of Product: EasyRetire Retail at EasyEquities took to the virtual podium to share some insights on the looming wealth transfer and the structural inflection point in financial advising on the back of artificial intelligence (AI).
Van Biljon, who was introduced by event host Carel Nolte as “fanatical” about investments, mentioned the three components in his current role at the financial services firm as overseeing traditional retirement products like annuities and living annuities; building out a new solution for advisers; and exploring ways to make it easier for small, medium and microenterprises (SMMEs) to facilitate employees' investment toward retirement. “AI is a structural shift that is determined and defined by demographics, technology and behaviour,” he said.
The advent of AI and AI agents is playing out at the tail-end of another behavioural trend defined by younger consumers becoming increasingly digitally active. Advisers who want to keep the estimated USD84-100 trillion that will change hands from Baby Boomers to subsequent generations on their books will have to learn to meet consumer expectations across age bands. This has to happen while performing the traditional financial planning functions of growing and protecting clients wealth.
The trifecta for advice practice modelling
“The future of financial advice is investment led, technology-enabled and behaviourally intelligent,” Van Biljon said, before commenting briefly on each of these talking points. He described investment led in the context of the shift from product distribution to strategic capital allocation and portfolio construction, encouraging advisers to up their game in areas like client education, fee and return transparency and performance attribution.
Under tech-enabled, he noted that younger clients seek automated monitoring, digital reporting, instant scenario modelling and scalable service in their interactions with advisers. Finally, behavioural intelligence has become ticket to play in the advising world. According to Van Biljon, AI can help advisers to look through client emotions that lead to irrational buy and sell decisions and refocus on long-term investment intelligence. Recognising and responding to behavioural differences between old and young clients is becoming an advice differentiator.
Trusted client relationships remain a core underpin for successful financial and risk advice practices, but the adviser-client dynamic is changing. “Clients want to be met where they are; they want to be able to relate to you as an advisor whether they are older or younger,” Van Biljon said. The traditional client cares about in-person trust which is often based on friendships built at school, university or social settings. Familiarity and stability were held up as key drivers of traditional clients handing over the ‘keys’ to their financial decision making.
Gen Z are real-time obsessed
By comparison, clients who belong to Gen Z and ensuing generations are used to receiving constant, copious information from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and elsewhere. Their idea of a 'best life' is based on dreams being pushed by social media algorithms. “It is not easy to build trust with clients from these generations,” Van Biljon said. They come from an age of instant gratification where real-time portfolio access and transactional capability is non-negotiable.
Modern digital investment platforms give younger consumers more outlets for their discretionary savings than ever, allowing them to trade crypto assets, derivatives, equities and exchange traded funds (ETFs), locally or offshore, with a few mouse-clicks. And the chat groups frequented by tech-savvy Gen Zs are more likely to feature crypto assets or non-fungible tokens and ‘happening’ technology shares like Nvidia and Tesla than old industrials like Barloworld and Sasol.
Advisers keen to win their trust must know how these platforms work and study up on these types of opportunities. “It is important to give advice aligned with the young client’s world view and not your own,” Van Biljon said. “If advice reflects you instead of them, you risk eroding trust.” He pondered what might happen when today’s young investors receive large inheritances.
Do they continue with the established trust-relationships with their parents’ financial planner, or find a financial planner of their own, or transfer their new-found wealth onto a digital platform and self-manage the funds, or turn to an AI Agent? “AI is an exponential technology, and we have no idea what its capabilities will be two years from today,” he said.
The balanced fund conundrum
Those from younger generations want personalised advice, and the tried-and-tested balanced fund, even at its highest risk levels, cannot appease the high risk appetites of informed investors with a 40-plus year runway to retirement. Or as the presenter explained, “young clients do not want conservative 60-40 balanced funds; they want to be able to discuss and invest in global small caps and new technologies on a unified platform.” Young investors want simple, unified, easy to understand and transparent platforms for their discretionary wealth.
AI will revolutionise the personalisation options across an adviser’s client base. It is already possible to use AI to combine client traits like age, behavioural profile, life stage, income and investment philosophy with the widest possible investment universe to create and execute deeply personalised financial plans at scale. Tomorrow’s AI agent will be capable of navigating the global investment universe alongside domestic risk solutions to optimise for each client, based on client data, in real-time.
The presentation shared three advising models that might emerge from the intersection of young customers and an AI and technology world. First, the ‘relationship only’ platform focused on in-person, human advice and comprised of mostly older clients. Second, the self-advised who are confident that AI and other technology can help them make essential financial decisions and do not believe there is a need for a financial adviser. And third, the hybrid strategy that combines in-person advice with technology, leveraging digital platforms to give adviser and client access to a global universe of investments.
The gold standard of advice models
It seems rational that the compound or hybrid model become the gold standard because it retains irreplaceable human interaction. This hybrid model enables advisers to meet all three of the requirements introduced in the opening paragraphs namely investment-led, technology-enabled and behaviourally intelligent. By adopting this model, advisers will find themselves on the right side of a growing list of questions, including:
- If my top 10 clients passed wealth to their children, would this wealth stay with me?
- Are my old clients passing on faster than I can replace them?
- Could my practice scale without me?
- Am I using AI or avoiding it?
- Would a 30-year old choose me today?
- What do I offer that an AI or digital platform cannot?
“You should be asking yourself more of these types of questions to plan your practice and see how you can better equip and position yourself for the future, especially in the eyes of the younger generation,” Van Biljon concluded. This, he said, would help advisers to stake a claim in the USD84-100 trillion that will be moving from older to younger clients over the coming decade.
Writer’s thoughts:
Another transformational shift in advice is upon us, this time promising to blend human judgement with AI agents just in time for a USD100 trillion inheritance windfall. Do you think advisers will flourish in AI-human models, or fall by the wayside? Please comment below, interact with us on X at @fanews_online or email us your thoughts [email protected].
