Building a Bridge to the Next Generation: How to Engage, Retain & Grow With Younger Clients

Drawing on original research into the expectations, communication preferences, and emotional concerns of younger investors, this panel explores practical tactics for preventing assets from walking out the door when older clients pass, building trust with adult children through family estate meetings, and evolving your practice to genuinely serve a multi-generational client base. Includes a live walkthrough of how FP Alpha’s estate tools and Absolute Engagement’s survey platform can work together to power a structured family meeting workflow.

What You’ll Learn

• Why this isn’t just about retaining assets — the bigger challenge is whether your business is truly compelling to younger clients when they arrive, however they arrive
• Original research on next-gen expectations — meeting frequency, virtual preferences, social media behaviour, how they find advisors online, and what concerns keep them up at night
• How younger clients differ emotionally, not just logistically — they’re more susceptible to confidence shocks from external events, more open about stress and family concerns, and more likely to want advisor help reaching non-financial goals
• The referral cliff — data showing that referral rates drop sharply as clients age, making younger clients critical to sustainable growth
• A structured family estate meeting workflow — combining Absolute Engagement’s survey tools with FP Alpha’s estate analysis to co-create a deeply personal, insight-driven family meeting agenda
• Practical tactics for adding value across life stages — from children’s e-wallets and college financing to student debt, first-time estate planning, and multi-generational wealth transfer
• Real examples from Altfest Personal Wealth Management — how estate planning uncovered a client’s need to protect their daughter, leading to a new multi-generational advisory relationship

Chapters

Click a timestamp to jump to that section of the webinar.

1. 0:05 — Welcome & Introductions — Andrew Altfest, Julie Littlechild, Vanessa Olegino
2. 4:51 — Framing the Challenge — Why Next-Gen Engagement Matters Now
3. 8:07 — The Referral Cliff — Why Older Clients Refer Less Over Time
4. 10:21 — Real Examples from Altfest — Estate Planning as the Gateway to Next-Gen Relationships
5. 16:11 — Research: What We Know About Younger Investors — Expectations & Preferences
6. 21:58 — Research: Going Deeper — Mindset, Confidence, Concerns & Goals
7. 27:04 — Capturing Your Own Data — Next-Gen Outreach Workflow Demo
8. 31:03 — Evolving Your Business — Team, Messaging, Digital Presence & Experience
9. 37:21 — Tactics That Work — Client Surveys, Estate Planning Meetings & Gifting
10. 42:33 — Connecting Through Messaging & Adding Value Across Life Stages
11. 47:43 — The Anatomy of a Family Estate Meeting — Case Study Walkthrough
12. 53:20 — Using FP Alpha in Family Meetings — Estate Snapshot & Estate Lab
13. 56:32 — Q&A — One Thing You Can Do Immediately

Key Takeaways

The Biggest Challenge Isn’t Getting Introductions, It’s Being Compelling When They Arrive

Julie reframed the next-gen challenge away from the common focus on introductions and asset retention. Whether a younger client comes through a parent’s referral or finds you online, the real question is whether your business speaks to their needs when they get there. If the experience they find is designed for someone 30 years older, the introduction doesn’t matter. This means the work isn’t just about getting in front of the next generation — it’s about evolving your messaging, digital presence, service model, and even your team to genuinely resonate with a different set of expectations and concerns.

Younger Clients Want More Connection, Not Less — But Differently

Absolute Engagement’s research revealed that clients aged 35–44 want significantly more meetings per year than older clients, but are happy with shorter meetings. About half of the youngest investors prefer either virtual-only or a mix of virtual and in-person, compared to three-quarters of 65–74-year-olds who strongly prefer in-person. Younger clients also prefer dynamic content delivery (live presentations, virtual events) over long-form articles, and are far more likely to have found their advisor through social media, blogs, or online search. Instagram is the dominant channel for the youngest segment, with LinkedIn and Facebook playing smaller roles.

The Concerns That Keep Younger Clients Up at Night Are Different

While market volatility and healthcare costs are universal concerns across all ages, the research showed stark differences in the top-five concerns by generation. Younger clients are most concerned about ensuring their family is taken care of and having enough time with family, the classic “juggle generation” managing young children and ageing parents simultaneously. They’re also more open to discussing a broader range of topics with their advisor, including stress, health, and parental concerns. Perhaps most importantly, they expressed a strong desire for their advisor to help them reach non-financial goals, legacy, experiences, causes, and skill development. This represents a fundamentally different kind of advisory conversation.

Family Estate Meetings Become Transformative When You Co-Create the Agenda

The panel outlined a structured family meeting workflow that goes well beyond booking a meeting and showing up. The approach: separately survey both parents and adult children in advance using targeted questions about their concerns, understanding, and values around the estate plan. Parents answer questions about what they want their children to know, their lessons about money, and their family values. Children answer parallel questions about what they understand, what worries them, and what they’d like to learn. These insights are then combined with FP Alpha’s estate analysis (document upload, estate snapshot, and estate lab scenario modelling) to create a deeply personalised, co-created meeting agenda that is different from anything the family has experienced.

Estate Planning Is the Natural Gateway to Multi-Generational Relationships

Andrew shared a concrete example: an elderly couple wanted to leave assets to their daughter in a way that protected her (she’s a stay-at-home mum and they were concerned about her financial security if her marriage didn’t last). Through the estate planning process, they asked Altfest to manage separate assets for the daughter and educate her about her roles as executor, trustee, and attorney-in-fact. This naturally created a new advisory relationship with the next generation. Without the estate planning conversation, those assets would have walked out the door when the parents passed. Andrew also noted that gifting strategies (like gifting in trust) create immediate service-provider relationships with beneficiaries, building trust before it’s needed.

Research Highlights: What the Data Shows

Key findings from Absolute Engagement’s annual high-net-worth investor research.

Tips & Best Practices from This Webinar

About the Speakers