Unlock Editor’s Digest Lock for Free
FT editor Roula Khalaf will select your favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Half of the rich millennials either moved major tax settlements last year or intend to do so this year, adding to the challenges faced by wealth managers trying to maintain lucrative young clients.
A quarter of millennials, who have over $1 million in investable assets, said they moved in 2024, with more quarter relocation plans, according to a survey conducted by Capgemini, a consultant firm of 3,400 between the ages of 28 and 43, in 2025.
The growing international mobility of wealthy young people poses a challenge for wealth managers who risk losing long-standing clients when they move.
“Next generation…” said Warren Thompson, managing director of Private Bank Coutts’ family office team.
A survey of wealthy individuals from Capgemini shows Gen Z is similarly mobile, indicating that half of respondents aged 12-27 moved last year or plan to do so this year.
Wealth managers struggle to retain long-standing clients when assets are handed over to the next generation, and even if many people are not relocating, they choose to cut down their relationship with their parents’ advisors.
A Capgemini survey showed that “81% of people trying to inherit wealth intended to switch parents’ wealth management companies within one or two years of succession.
“Making money in the same place that it grew is not the case for the next generation,” said Elias Ghanem, global head of the Capgemini Research Institute for Financial Services Institute, adding that many young clients are “not doing what their parents are doing.”
To win and retain business from the younger generation, wealth managers and advisors are adopting new strategies.
According to a report published this week by Capgemini, it should include providing more access to crypto assets, creating AI-enabled digital platforms, and enhancing the quality of relationship managers.
Ganem said there is “urgency” for wealth managers to rapidly modernize their business models to retain millennial clients.
James Morrell, deputy chief executive of UK Wealth Management Business at Rothschild & Co, said the bank has deployed young advisors to keep their younger clients in place. “It’s very common to send multi-generational teams to face off against multi-generational clients,” he said.
Rothschild “who tried to incorporate AI and spent a lot of time and money on the job,” he added.
Priyanka Hindocha, head of UK Family Offices at Wealth Manager Stonehage Fleming, said her company is holding a “next Gen” programme where heirs come to the office to learn about finances and meet others in the same position.
The wealth manager warned that some people moving jurisdiction do not always receive assets. One of the UK’s biggest asset managers said that changes to the country’s non-dom tax system left many rich people leaving the UK with a massive amount of assets left for their UK managers.
