You’ve built success, grown your wealth, and worked with trusted advisors for years – so why does it still feel like something’s missing?
According to EY’s 2025 Global Wealth Research Report, 45% of affluent clients say investing has become more complex than it was just two years ago. And half of all respondents feel underprepared to pass their wealth on to the next generation. These are not beginners. These are successful, financially established individuals, many with multiple advisory relationships, yet still facing gaps in clarity, confidence, and preparedness. In today’s environment, growing wealth doesn’t automatically translate into peace of mind.
The Complexity Creep: When Success Brings More Moving Parts
With success comes opportunity, and with opportunity often comes complexity. Affluent families today are more globally diversified, more invested across alternative products, and more engaged in sophisticated structures than ever before. These are signs of strategic thinking, not chaos. But with each new layer of opportunity – offshore holdings, multiple providers, private assets, tax structures – comes another dimension of oversight.
It’s no wonder 45% of clients globally report that their investing needs have become more complex. Tax planning, intergenerational transfers, and capturing a holistic view of wealth are among the top areas where clients feel overwhelmed. This isn’t about poor advice. It’s about the inherent difficulty of stitching together a full picture when information lives in silos.
The Preparedness Gap: A Ticking Clock for Affluent Families
Despite placing high importance on wealth transfer, 50% of clients report feeling underprepared for it. That figure climbs even higher among Asia-Pacific clients and younger generations: those who often stand to inherit or distribute wealth in the near future.
EY’s research reveals that the reasons behind this underpreparedness are clear and recurring:
- Neglected complexity of the topic: Inheritance and legacy planning are often seen as future concerns, leading many to delay active engagement until it’s too late.
- Siloed financial information: With assets spread across institutions and geographies, few individuals have a complete picture of their wealth in one place.
- Unclear roles and responsibilities: Without a shared understanding of who does what in the family and among advisors, tasks fall through the cracks.
- Lack of structured tools: Many affluent individuals still rely on static documents or fragmented spreadsheets, rather than dynamic, centralized platforms to plan and communicate effectively.
The outcome? Missed opportunities, redundant fees, duplicated strategies, and uncertainty about whether their legacy will be transferred as intended.
What’s Causing the Disconnect?
Success brings diversification. Diversification brings fragmentation. Fragmentation brings confusion.
Even with the best advisors, affluent individuals are managing wealth across geographies, providers, and asset types. What’s missing isn’t expertise: it’s integration. The absence of a unified view leads to underutilised strategies, emotional strain, and a nagging sense that something important may be slipping through the cracks.
A Call for Clarity: The Power of Centralized Visibility
What affluent families need now isn’t more complexity or more advisors. They need clarity.
A centralized, comprehensive view of one’s financial landscape can be transformative: including structured assets, property, private holdings, liabilities, and family roles. It makes it easier to:
- Spot gaps and overlaps in strategy
- Understand the real-world impact of financial decisions
- Share relevant information with advisors, legal teams, and family without oversharing
- Reduce emotional and cognitive load
And yes, it also supports legacy transfer, making it easier for future generations to step into their roles without a messy paper trail or a scramble for documents.
The Role of Technology: From Oversight to Insight
Fortunately, new tools are emerging to meet this need. Digital platforms like Teleskop are helping affluent individuals consolidate information, visualise their entire financial world, and make more informed decisions.
These platforms do more than store data. They enable pattern recognition, identify blind spots, and help families build a living, evolving record of their wealth. With features tailored to privacy, selective sharing, and secure storage, they provide peace of mind that no spreadsheet ever could.
In a world where complexity is only going to increase, technology isn’t just a convenience: it’s a strategic advantage. It gives successful families the one thing they still lack: clear, confident oversight of their legacy in motion.
