What Is the Great Wealth Transfer?

The “Great Wealth Transfer” are words that get used often in business media and can feel abstract. But they refer to a very real historic shift in wealth. Research firm Cerulli Associates¹ projects that by 2048 $124 trillion will transfer from baby boomers and older generations to heirs ($105 trillion) and charity ($18 trillion).

Spouses, children, grandchildren, and other heirs are coming into an unprecedented amount of wealth in the coming decades. Cerulli finds:

• Nearly $54 trillion will first move to spouses before eventually reaching heirs and charities.
• Nearly $40 trillion of those spousal transfers are expected to go to widowed women in the Baby Boomer and older generations.
• Meanwhile, Millennials are projected to inherit the most over the next 25 years: roughly $46 trillion.
• Gen X is on track to inherit the most within the next decade, at about $14 trillion.

That is the macro view. The more personal version is this: it is not just about money moving. It is about decision-making power moving too. Many women and next-gen heirs will, at some point, be asked to take on financial responsibility they did not fully expect or fully prepare for.

What the Great Wealth Transfer Actually Means

At its simplest, the Great Wealth Transfer is the large-scale movement of wealth from one generation to the next.

That can include investment accounts, insurance, annuities, retirement assets, real estate, business interests, trusts, and other family assets. Sometimes it happens gradually through gifting. Sometimes it follows a death. Sometimes wealth moves first to a surviving spouse and then later to children or grandchildren. Wealth can also skip a generation and move directly to grandchildren.

More than 50% of the transfer will be concentrated among the wealthiest 2% of households. But this is not a story reserved for dynastic wealth. Anyone leaving assets or expecting to inherit them is part of this shift.

Why the Phrase Matters, and Where It Falls Short

The phrase “Great Wealth Transfer” is useful because it signals scale. This is one of the largest intergenerational wealth shifts in modern history. But it can also make the process sound cleaner than it often is.

In real life, wealth transfer rarely arrives as a purely financial event. It often happens alongside grief, caregiving, family change, and legal paperwork. A surviving spouse may be grieving while simultaneously taking over finances she did not previously manage. An adult child may be stepping into an inheritance while navigating sibling dynamics, unfamiliar tax obligations, and advisor relationships they did not choose. EY’s 2025 Global Wealth Research² found that 50% of investors feel underprepared for wealth transfer, and only 28% said their advisor had adequately engaged them on the topic.

The gap between the transfer and the readiness is where most of the real work happens. And millions of families are not yet having the conversations that would close it.

The next post in this series looks at who sits at the center of that gap: women and next-gen heirs, and what the data tells us about how unprepared many of them actually are.

Engagement Question: When you hear “Great Wealth Transfer,” what comes to mind first: opportunity, responsibility, or uncertainty?

Sources

¹ Cerulli Associates, “Cerulli Anticipates $124 Trillion in Wealth Will Transfer Through 2048,” December 5, 2024.

² EY, “New EY Report Finds Investors’ Confidence Wanes as Digital Assets Surge Amid Unprecedented Wealth Transfer Challenges,” May 20, 2025.

About the Author: Stacie Hoffmeister is an enterprise operating executive with 20+ years of experience leading growth, transformation, and organizational performance across wealth management, consumer brands, and advisory environments. She writes about the strategic and market shifts reshaping wealth management, including the Great Wealth Transfer and the rise of women and next-generation investors.