By Gemma Livermore, International Financial Services Marketing Director at Seismic
Wealth is migrating across borders at unprecedented volume. This year, 142,000 millionaires worldwide are relocating, taking trillions in investable assets with them. It’s the largest voluntary shift of private capital in modern history.
The UK leads this exodus. By year’s end, 16,500 millionaires will abandon the country, pulling more than £90 billion in assets along with them. This is nearly double China’s outflow of 7,800 millionaires. Meanwhile, the UAE is attracting 9,800 wealthy residents and the United States 7,500.
First, high-net-worth individuals are leaving traditional wealth centres at record rates. Second, the largest intergenerational wealth transfer ever recorded is about to land in the laps of Millennials and Gen Z, generations most firms just aren’t prepared to serve.
If wealth managers miss either shift, the consequences won’t just be lost revenue, it could cost them their institutional irrelevance.
The great migration
Clients aren’t fleeing wealth managers because of poor service. They’re leaving because competitors in Dubai, Singapore and Zurich offer something different, better. They offer digital precision, hyper-personalisation and real-time answers. These are no longer nice-to-haves or special features, they’re mandatory services if firms want to keep their clients.
Recent research reveals why the UK is falling behind: 45% still rely on manual processes. Significantly higher than the European average. Nearly half say budget limitations are the main barrier to digital transformation, and only 55% say their AI initiatives are “very effective,” with many remaining stuck in eternal pilots.
The traditional wealth management approach (quarterly reviews, annual strategy sessions, relationship maintenance) is a vestige of the past. Today’s affluent clients have come to expect the immediacy and personalisation of retail tech in every interaction. When their wealth manager can’t deliver what their streaming service or banking app provides, they start heading for the door.
The generational divide
As firms scramble to hold on to existing clients, an even bigger challenge waits around the corner: the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer in history. Millennials and Gen Z will inherit trillions in assets over the next decade, but only 57% of UK firms feel prepared to serve these demographics, the lowest readiness score in all of Europe.
This is about completely different expectations around transparency, communication and service delivery. Young clients expect digital-first experiences as they’ve never known anything else.
The generational challenge also reveals the dangerous assumption that inheritors will automatically stay with their parents’ wealth managers. But research consistently shows that most beneficiaries switch advisers after getting their inheritance; often, they never built a relationship with the original firm.
Firms that haven’t nurtured those connections will find themselves competing for clients they believed would stick around forever.
Technology’s real role
Technology can solve both problems if it’s used in the right way. Badly implemented, it makes interactions feel transactional and pushes clients away faster. The value isn’t in automation for its own sake. It’s in freeing advisers from repetitive work like meeting prep, routine analysis and data gathering.
In the end, it’s about creating space for the personalised interactions that make clients want to stay.
The path forward
Three priorities can help guide firms in 2026. Advisers need AI-led insights that surface relevant information before client meetings. Operations need streamlining so teams can serve more clients without sacrificing quality. And training programs need to help advisers navigate generational differences in communication and expectations.
The goal isn’t replacing human judgment with algorithms, but rather augmenting adviser capabilities so they can give responsive, tailored service. Whether clients are weighing an international move or inheriting their first major portfolio, this approach makes them feel heard and genuinely understood.
What this means for 2026
Wealth management confronts two imperatives: keep today’s high-net-worth clients while winning tomorrow’s inheritors. Both require a fundamental rethink of how firms deliver value.
The winners won’t be the firms with the most sophisticated algorithms or the newest and shiniest digital platforms. They’ll be the ones that use technology to create more human relationships, the ones that understand personalisation is empathy augmented by smart systems.
For firms still treating digital transformation as a long-term project or generational readiness as a future concern, 2026 will be a reckoning year. The clients won’t wait, and neither will their children.
