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Multi-Gen FA Teams Best Suited for Great Wealth Transfer, Wells Execs Say

Financial advisors who are on multigenerational teams are well positioned to manage wealth as it passes across generations.

The long-awaited Great Wealth Transfer has arrived, and financial advisors who have positioned themselves on a multigenerational team may reap the most rewards.

With $124 trillion of client assets at stake in the next 25 years, financial advisors are keen to maintain their relationships with clients and their children and grandchildren.

"It is running at about a $4 trillion-a-year clip right now. It's going to go up to about $6 trillion a year in the next decade," Heather Hunt-Ruddy, Central Division leader for Wells Fargo Advisors, told Financial Advisor IQ.

As the baby boomer generation passes away, gaps in financial literacy among inheritors are becoming apparent. Baby boomer men (who control most of the wealth) have historically been reticent to talk about money, even with their spouse and kids, Hunt-Ruddy said.

"If those children and that  are not prepared to receive that money and understand it, we risk disasters, in the worst-case scenario," Hunt-Ruddy said. "We just risk the legacy of the person who built the wealth being lost."

Statistically, half of the wealth is erased by the second generation and nearly 70% is lost by the third generation, she added.

The risk is great for advisors as well.

"Seventy percent of those clients, when the money moves, are going to change their advisor," said Sol Gindi, the head of Wells Fargo Advisors. "We view teaming as one of the ways that we're going to get ahead of that trend. We want that 70% to go way down."

Compared to solo practitioners, teams of financial advisors grow faster and have deeper, longer client relationships, Gindi said.

"Teams, particularly multigenerational teams, are a great way for our advisors to have great relationships with the different generations in a family," Gindi said. "When they do that successfully, they're much more likely to be retained as the advisor and to grow the relationship over time."

As Hunt-Ruddy speaks with Wells advisors across the country, about 30% of the questions she gets are about building a team, she said.

"I think it's a business imperative. I truly do. For years, people were afraid of giving up control," Hunt-Ruddy said. "But this business is changing so fast that advisors are going to have to evolve, or this opportunity is just going to pass them by."

Original article published April 8, 2026 at www.financialadvisoriq.com

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