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Great wealth transfer; generational wealth transfer
Intergenerational wealth transfer is the passing of assets from one generation to the next, through inheritance, lifetime gifting or trusts. UK estimates place the value in the trillions over the coming decades, concentrated in residential property and pension wealth.
Its scale is driven by demographics and by asset price growth: a generation that bought property early and accumulated pension wealth is now passing it on, into a tax regime with thresholds frozen until 2031 and pensions coming into charge from 2027.
For advice firms it is a retention question as much as a planning one. Assets under management transfer to beneficiaries who frequently have no relationship with the incumbent firm, and who leave. The mitigation is engaging the next generation before the transfer, not after it.
For families, the recurring failure is not tax. It is knowledge: heirs who do not know what exists, where it is held, or what was intended. The plan and the record are different things, and the second is what the family actually inherits.
