What Millennials and Gen Z are teaching the industry about the future of advice
For years, the wealth management industry has treated younger investors as a “future segment”, something to prepare for once assets grow, careers mature, and financial lives become more complex. But expectations around wealth management for Millennials and Gen Z are already reshaping how advice is delivered today.
That mindset is no longer viable. EY reported last year that 50 % of investors feel underprepared for intergenerational wealth transfer, reinforcing urgency for firms to adapt now. Millennials and Gen Z are already reshaping how investing looks, feels, and functions. And as trillions in assets transfer from older generations over the coming decade, the firms that succeed will be those that evolve their models to meet younger investors where they are now, and also where they’re heading.
But will the industry change fast enough to remain relevant?
How younger investors expect transparency, access, and control
Millennial and Gen Z investors have grown up in a world defined by digital access and on-demand information. As a result, they approach investing with a fundamentally different mindset. They expect instant access to tools and data, clear and jargon-free explanations for financial decisions, and full transparency around risks, costs, and trade-offs. Just as importantly, they want to feel a sense of control, not in the sense of managing every detail themselves, but in understanding how decisions are made and how those decisions align with their financial situation and goals.
They are comfortable engaging digitally and making decisions online, but they are also deeply sceptical of opaque models and unclear recommendations. Being told what to invest in is no longer enough. This scepticism is not a rejection of advice, but rather a demand for understanding and a better experience overall. Younger investors are far more likely to engage when financial guidance helps them see why certain decisions matter in the context of their own financial situations, and how choices today affect their future outcomes, trade-offs, and risks across different life stages. They value tools that make financial decision-making clearer, more explainable, and grounded in their personal circumstances.
This is where data-driven, analytics-led platforms become essential. Increasingly, wealth firms are using technology to move beyond static recommendations and provide contextual insight that connects investments to real-life goals and scenarios. Many KidbrookeONE customers are already building these kinds of tools, enabling advisors and digital channels to explain decisions in a way that feels transparent, relevant, and credible to a generation that expects clarity.
Turning values into informed decisions
Younger investors are often associated with values-based investing, whether that’s sustainability, ethical business practices, or social impact. While these preferences are genuine, they also introduce complexity. Values are personal, nuanced, and rarely fit neatly into predefined categories.
What younger investors are really seeking is context. They want to understand how their personal beliefs intersect with financial outcomes, and what the long-term implications of those choices might be. This goes far beyond labels or high-level disclosures. It requires clear, data-driven explanations that show trade-offs, risks, and potential outcomes over time, as they apply to real portfolios and real decisions.
For wealth managers, this represents a shift from simply offering values-aligned products to empowering investors with insight. In practice, this means having the ability to bring together market and ESG data into a single, consistent view, enriching it with meaningful analytics at both product and portfolio level. Firms that invest in this kind of data management can help investors see how today’s choices connect to tomorrow’s realities in clear, relatable terms. This is where explanation builds more trust.
Risk preferences evolve, digital tolerance doesn’t
Younger investors today are often drawn to riskier strategies, alternative assets, and investments in emerging markets. But generational risk tolerance is not static. As life progresses and responsibilities increase, perhaps via home ownership, family planning, or retirement considerations, their portfolios naturally become more balanced and goal-oriented.
What is unlikely to change is their baseline comfort with digital tools. For digital-native investors, technology goes without saying and is expected. As financial priorities evolve, this familiarity will continue to influence how they engage with new solutions, with trust shaped less by novelty and more by clarity, context, and relevance. The difference is that enthusiasm alone will not drive decisions. These investments will need to be presented transparently and supported by robust data, with clear modelling that shows how individual choices affect the broader financial picture.
Why hybrid wealth management appeals to Millennials and Gen Z
Although younger investors favour digital tools, the future points more towards a hybrid model.
As financial lives become more complex, human advisors will play an increasingly important role. But younger generations will expect those advisors to be empowered by analytics rather than spreadsheets and supported by intelligent tools that enhance consistency and clarity. Recommendations will need to be explainable, repeatable, and clearly linked to client goals, while engagement becomes more proactive and driven by real-time insight rather than periodic reviews.
In this environment, technology operates behind the scenes, enabling advisors to deliver advice that feels personal, timely, and relevant, without sacrificing scalability.
A wealth transfer that will redefine expectations
The generational wealth transfer that is underway is a fundamental shift in expectations. Over the next decade, it will accelerate the industry’s move from products to experiences, from opaque assumptions to more transparent, relevant and explainable analytics, and from traditional advice frameworks to embedded wealth experiences integrated into everyday digital ecosystems.
In this next phase of wealth management, trust will be built through clarity, relevance, and transparency. Furthermore, technology will not replace human advice, but make it more accessible, contextual, and aligned with real-life decisions.
We need to remember that younger investors are not a passing segment; their expectations will have a lasting influence on the future direction of wealth management.
Firms that succeed will be those that evolve their advisory models alongside these investors, embracing data-driven insight, real-time engagement, and human-centric design. The goal is not to retrain younger generations, but to build experiences that grow with them as financial complexity increases.
Supporting younger investors as their financial lives evolve requires intelligence behind every interaction. Platforms like KidbrookeONE are designed to help wealth firms deliver explainable, analytics-driven insight at scale, enabling advisors and digital channels to provide consistent, transparent guidance across all life stages. By leveraging out unified platform firms can move beyond product-led conversations and create financial experiences that feel relevant, timely, and aligned with how younger generations expect to engage today, and in the future.
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