Great Wealth Transfer Puts Focus on Michael Gold’s Westport Firm
An enormous amount of money is about to change hands. Estimates put the so called Great Wealth Transfer, the movement of assets from older generations to their heirs, at 84 to 120 trillion dollars over the next two decades, with the peak expected around 2026. Michael Gold, founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, says most advisory firms are not built to handle that volume alongside everything else happening in the ultra high net worth space.
Michael Gold points to two other forces converging on the same timeline. Close to three quarters of privately held business owners plan to exit or transition their companies within a decade, a wave tied to an estimated 10 to 14 trillion dollars in wealth. Meanwhile, nearly half of financial advisors intend to retire by 2035, thinning out the ranks of people experienced enough to guide families through decisions of this size.
A Gap in Coverage
“This is a structural gap at the precise moment UHNW families need the highest level of judgment, coordination and strategic leadership,” Gold says, describing why he built his Westport practice specifically around families with 20 million to 150 million dollars in net worth rather than trying to serve everyone.
Passing wealth to a new generation, Michael Gold Westport notes, is rarely just a financial exercise. It usually involves legacy goals, family dynamics that have built up over decades, and coordination across multiple entities and professionals who may never have spoken to one another. He argues that families going through a transfer benefit most from an advisor willing to lay out every viable option and its tradeoffs before anything becomes irreversible, rather than one who simply executes whatever the most vocal family member requests. As more firms build dedicated teams to serve heirs directly, Gold says the ones that last will be the ones who stay personally engaged with a family long after the initial handoff is done. Refer to this article for related information.
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