January / February 2026 • www. fa-mag. com

When Your Clients Get Hacked It’ s not enough to say it’ s not your problem.

Did You Get 2025 Wrong, Too? Advisors give 2026 a rethink.

KNOWLEDGE FOR THE SOPHISTICATED ADVISOR

The Productivity Trap Facing Young Advisors

Junior advisors are looking for credit and compensation as they build careers in businesses where the asset gathering has already been done.

HSAs In The Spotlight

Millions more people will be eligible for them. But not all is rosy.

HAT THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY chooses to call the great wealth transfer is really taking shape as a great wealth transition. Or put another way, all this money in motion is more likely to move over a 20- or 30-year period rather than in the next decade.

And there are some questions about exactly how much money will actually transfer to the next generation. In just the past few years that figure has ballooned from about $ 80 trillion to more than $ 120 trillion thanks to rising home values and stock prices.

Skeptics cite several reasons these figures might be optimistic. That’ s partly because a combination of people’ s increased longevity and new healthcare treatments means baby boomers could see their life expectancies increase in the next two decades. They’ ll be holding onto a lot of their wealth for longer than people think.

Advances in medicine, which are likely to be fueled by AI, will come at a cost, and a big chunk of that expense could be picked up by the patients, depleting their assets. Our national conversation will be more devoted to the looming insolvency of Social Security, but Medicare is running out of funds much faster. It’ s hard to assume that Congress will ultimately make both entitlement programs whole without expecting beneficiaries to pick up a bigger share of the tab.

Some of the wealth projections underlying the $ 120 trillion wealth transfer figure assume that recent returns from financial assets over the last 15 years are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. That assumption could well be wrong, too. And in any case, young people simply betting on getting a big inheritance is not a smart financial plan.

There’ s going to be a need for financial advice as everyday Americans contend with these issues, yet, as firms like McKinsey have noted, there’ s a looming advisor shortage as many of the people who started this industry hit retirement.

Some of the wealth projections underlying the $ 120 trillion wealth transfer figure assume that recent returns from financial assets over the last 15 years are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

A number of smart young financial advisors have arrived to take their place, but they are trying to overcome their own barriers to entering this profession, such as unclear career paths. Financial Advisor’ s Jennifer Lea Reed chronicles this problem in this month’ s cover story. As Reed writes, advisors in the past made their careers by gathering assets, but there are other ways to break into the business that will be just as important.

Not surprisingly, the obstacles keeping young advisors from moving up in other people’ s firms are prompting some of them to go out and form their own— in much the same way the first generation of advisors left big wirehouses and insurers in the 1980s and 1990s. There’ s a lot at stake, as they will be hoping to serve a different clientele— young recipients of the great wealth transition— over the next three decades. The hope is that this will help them build much bigger businesses than the fledgling shops they are running today.

But there are likely to be a lot of wild cards along the way.

Evan Simonoff

Email me at esimonoff @ famagazine. com with your opinion.

8 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2026 WWW. FA-MAG. COM