Wealthy clients now work with several firms. Who sees the whole picture?

November 2026 · Industry

Request demo

Summary: The single-advisor relationship is fading. Capgemini's latest research suggests the firms that keep their clients will be the ones that can see and explain the whole of a family's wealth, including the parts they do not manage.

For decades, the working assumption in wealth management was that a client had one primary firm, and that firm's statement was, more or less, the client's financial picture. Capgemini's World Wealth Report 2026, published on June 4, 2026, suggests that assumption no longer holds for a large share of high-net-worth clients.

The report, the 30th edition of the series, draws on surveys of 6,510 high-net-worth individuals across 27 markets, 144 wealth management executives and 1,317 relationship managers. Its headline numbers were about record wealth. Its more useful findings, for firms that serve families, are about fragmentation.

Exclusive relationships have halved

According to Capgemini, 39 per cent of high-net-worth individuals worked with a single wealth management firm in 2019. By 2025 that share had fallen to 19 per cent. Coverage of the report in InvestmentNews adds that the share working with four to six firms doubled over the same period, to 25 per cent.

The reason most often cited is access. Capgemini reports that 88 per cent of high-net-worth individuals work with multiple firms specifically to reach better alternative investment opportunities. Private equity, private credit, hedge funds and other specialized products are often offered by a particular manager or platform, so a client who wants them ends up with more relationships.

For an individual firm, the consequence is simple: what it manages is, increasingly, only part of what the client owns. For the client, the consequence is that nobody may be looking at the whole.

Firms know they lack a single view

The report is candid about the industry's side of the problem. Sixty per cent of wealth management executives surveyed acknowledged that their firms lack a unified client view. Clients notice. Only 17 per cent of high-net-worth individuals described their advisory experience as seamless and personalized, and 42 per cent said they had to restate their goals and preferences multiple times to the same firm.

That last figure is worth pausing on. It describes friction inside a single firm, not across several. If one organization struggles to hold a consistent record of a client's goals, the odds of anyone holding a consistent record of a client's total wealth, spread across four or more firms, are low.

Capgemini also found that 97 per cent of firms still segment clients mainly by wealth bands. Segmenting by assets under management makes sense when the firm sees most of the assets. It makes much less sense when it sees a fraction of them.

Why held-away assets matter for advice

Held-away assets are not a new idea, but the Capgemini data changes their weight. When a firm's share of a client's wealth is small or unknown, several kinds of advice become harder to give well:

  • Asset allocation. A portfolio that looks balanced inside one firm may be heavily concentrated once a private equity commitment, a real estate holding or the family business is counted.
  • Liquidity. Capital calls, loan repayments and tax instalments draw on cash wherever it sits. Planning for them needs the full list of obligations and the full list of sources.
  • Risk. Concentration in one sector, one region or one counterparty is often invisible from a single custodian's statement.
  • Estate and succession planning. Decisions about who inherits what, and through which structure, depend on knowing what exists in the first place.

None of this means an advisor has to manage every asset. It means the advisor, or someone the family trusts, has to be able to see them.

The advisor's role is shifting

Capgemini's relationship manager survey points to the same conclusion from the inside. Relationship managers report that 41 per cent of their time goes to operational tasks. Three quarters want AI-enabled systems to automate routine work, and 61 per cent want access to an integrated network of specialists to respond to clients' financial and non-financial needs. The report describes relationship managers "shifting their focus and responsibilities from execution to orchestration."

The report also links coordination to commercial outcomes. When firms get the client experience right, Capgemini says, 53 per cent of high-net-worth individuals recommend their firm to others and 47 per cent consolidate their assets with it. Consolidation, in other words, tends to follow trust, and trust tends to follow the sense that someone understands the whole situation.

What a whole-of-wealth view requires

For investment counsel firms and multi-family offices in Canada, where client wealth is often held through holding companies, family trusts and private businesses as well as through accounts, a complete view has a few practical components:

  1. The family, not the account, as the starting point. Record the people, the entities they own and the percentages they own them in. A household is rarely just two spouses and a joint account.
  2. Managed and held-away assets side by side. Public securities at the firm, accounts at other institutions, private funds, real estate and business interests should sit on the same balance sheet, clearly labelled by source and by how current each value is.
  3. Look-through ownership. If a holding company owns an operating company, and the holding company is split among family members and a trust, each person's share of net worth should follow the ownership chain.
  4. Dates and documents in the same place. Fiscal year-ends, loan terms, trust anniversaries and document expiries are part of the client's picture, and they drive much of the work.
  5. A clear record of goals. If 42 per cent of clients are repeating themselves, the fix is partly a matter of process: write goals down once, where everyone who serves the family can see them.

Closing thoughts

Capgemini's numbers describe a client base that has spread its wealth across more firms than ever, and an industry that, by its own admission, often cannot see a client as a whole. That combination creates an opening for the firms willing to take on the coordinating role: to hold the complete picture, including what they do not manage, and to explain it clearly. Building that picture around the family and its entities, rather than around accounts, is the approach Mozaiik takes.

Sources

Keep reading

Family offices are adopting AI, but their reporting is still done by hand

November 2026 · Technology

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

November 2026 · Planning

Bare trust reporting is back for 2026: what family offices should map before year-end

November 2026 · Tax

Wealth

Consolidated net worthOne number for the family, with every asset class behind it.The whole structureEvery person, holdco and trust on one map, with ownership in view.

Work

Every deadline, coveredEvery deadline for every family, generated for you.Your whole bookEvery family you serve on one screen.

Data

Data that keeps itself currentRaymond James and Microsoft Outlook, live today.Every document accounted forRequired documents for every person and company.IntegrationsWhat connects to Mozaiik today.

Trust

SecurityHosted in Canada. SOC 2 Type I audit underway.Trust CenterOur controls and policies, live.