The great wealth transfer is slower than expected, and the family is getting bigger

November 2026 · Planning

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Summary: Recent family office research suggests the handover between generations is arriving gradually, while the number of family members each office serves keeps growing. Both trends make the family, not the account, the natural unit of planning.

The "great wealth transfer" is usually described as a wave: a large sum of money moving from one generation to the next in a short window. Two family office studies published this year paint a more gradual picture, and a more complicated one. The transfer is happening, but slowly, and the families on the receiving end are larger and more spread out than the people who built the wealth.

What the 2026 research found

The North America Family Office Report 2026, released by RBC and Campden Wealth at the end of September 2026, surveyed 155 family offices across the Americas, 21 of them in Canada. Among its findings on generational change:

  • 23 per cent of offices report that a transfer between generations has already taken place, and 77 per cent have not yet been through one.
  • 43 per cent of offices are still controlled by the generation that created the wealth.
  • Among offices that have not yet transferred, more than half (52 per cent) do not expect a transition for at least ten years.

Campden Wealth's chief executive, Dominic Samuelson, sums up the data in his foreword: the transfer appears to be arriving later and more gradually than expected, and alongside a wave of newly created wealth and new family offices. One in five offices in the survey was formed within the past six years.

The UBS Global Family Office Report 2026, published in June 2026 and based on 307 family offices in more than 30 markets surveyed between January 22 and March 30, 2026, adds a global view. It finds that 45 per cent of family offices currently involve the next generation to some extent, but that many heirs whom the offices consider old enough to take part are still not involved.

The family is growing faster than the plan

One RBC finding received less attention than it deserves. Offices expect the number of family members they serve to grow over the next five years, from a median of eight today to ten, which the report notes is a 25 per cent increase. The averages are higher and rise more steeply, from 24 to 33, suggesting the largest families expect the most growth.

That growth has practical effects. Each new spouse, child or grandchild may bring new accounts, new trusts, new holding companies and new advisors. Each branch of the family may have different goals, different tax situations and, increasingly, different firms. A balance sheet that was simple for one founding couple can become difficult to follow across three generations and several households.

The UBS report hints at how few offices are set up for this. Only 27 per cent have a process for budgeting, forecasting and cash flow reporting for each nuclear household within the family.

Succession plans remain informal

Both studies find that planning lags behind the stakes.

In the RBC study, succession plans are the least formal of all governance documents. Fifty-two per cent of offices say their succession plan is informal or communicated but not written down, about a quarter say it is documented, and 23 per cent have none at all. Only 26 per cent of offices help next-generation members understand the role they will play after succession, and next-generation education and succession planning are rated the least satisfying functions of the office, as they were the year before.

UBS reaches a similar conclusion. Just 27 per cent of family offices have an organized process to educate or prepare the next generation for future roles, and far fewer have a succession plan for the family office itself than for the family's wealth.

The RBC report offers a reasonable explanation for the gap. When a transition seems a decade away, a succession plan does not feel urgent. The report's authors point out that the purpose of such documents is to prepare for the unexpected, not the scheduled.

Why the next generation may not stay

There is a commercial side to this as well. Capgemini's World Wealth Report 2025, published in June 2025, found that 81 per cent of inheritors plan to switch wealth management firms within one to two years of receiving an inheritance. The same report found that advisors ranked a digital platform with a holistic client view and actionable insights as the most important capability their firms could give them to serve next-generation clients.

Taken together with the RBC and UBS findings, the message is consistent. Heirs who have not been involved, who have not seen the whole picture and who have no relationship with the family's advisors have little reason to stay with them. A slow transfer gives firms and families time to change that, but only if the time is used.

Preparing for a long passage

If the transfer is a process measured in decades rather than a single event, preparation looks different. A few steps help regardless of where a family sits on the timeline:

  1. Map the family as it actually is. Record every member, every entity and every ownership percentage, including trusts and holding companies, so the structure can be explained to someone who has not lived it.
  2. Show each person their share. Look-through net worth, which follows ownership from operating company to holding company to individual, lets each family member see what they own today and what they may own later.
  3. Put the dates on the calendar. Trust anniversaries, including the 21-year deemed disposition in Canada, loan maturities, fiscal year-ends and document expiries are the moments when plans are tested.
  4. Keep the documents with the structure. Wills, shareholder agreements, trust deeds and powers of attorney are more useful when they sit next to the entities they govern.
  5. Bring the next generation in early. Both RBC and UBS describe next-generation education as a weak spot. Giving heirs a clear, current view of the family's wealth is a practical place to start.

Closing thoughts

The research published this year does not suggest the wealth transfer is overstated. It suggests it is slower, more gradual and more complex than the familiar headline implies, unfolding across a growing family and a widening set of entities and advisors. That makes the family, with all its members and structures, the right unit for planning and reporting. It is the unit Mozaiik's wealth map is built around.

This article is general information, not tax, legal or investment advice.

Sources

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