Fidelity Investments released a new study on September 17 that reveals a significant disconnect in wealth transfer planning. Only 37% of affluent older Americans report high peace of mind about their future financial plans, even though most have already completed essential retirement, health-care, and estate documents. The study suggests that the missing step is often a simple conversation with family members.
The research, conducted by Publicis Sapient, surveyed 654 married or partnered U.S. adults aged 55 or older, each with at least $500,000 in net worth and an adult child. The survey was fielded from November 7, 2025, through January 1, 2026, and Fidelity reported a maximum full-sample margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. The sample does not include single older adults, less affluent households, or heirs themselves.
Key findings show that parents who had communicated their completed plans to family were more than three times as likely to express high confidence in their planning. However, only 21% of respondents had told their adult children about completed estate plans, and roughly one-third said they had never openly discussed important future-planning topics with them.
For Fidelity, a private company with no publicly traded stock, this gap is also a commercial concern. An account may be legally ready to pass to an heir, but the relationship with the firm managing it may not be. Fidelity's research reads as a retention case for involving spouses and adult children before money changes hands, not simply as estate-planning advice.
The stakes are significant for the entire wealth management industry. Fidelity reported $19.9 trillion in assets under administration and $7.8 trillion in managed assets as of June 30, 2026. Its latest annual report recorded $37.7 billion in 2025 revenue, up 15%, and $12.7 billion in operating income, up 24%. Customer planning interactions rose 19% to 10.1 million.
These figures explain why a conversation about family roles belongs in an investor story. Planning is not only a service cost; it can connect the next owner of an account to the incumbent firm. Fidelity offers brokerage and investment-advisory services through affiliated entities, so keeping assets after a death or incapacity can protect future fee revenue, cash balances, and trading activity. The same economics apply to publicly traded wealth managers and brokers such as Charles Schwab (SCHW), Morgan Stanley (MS), and Bank of America (BAC), even though Fidelity does not publish a segment-level estimate of revenue at risk.
Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion will transfer through 2048, including $105 trillion to heirs and $18 trillion to charity. It expects $54 trillion to first move between spouses, with nearly $40 trillion going to widowed women. In Cerulli's 2024 survey, 89% of high-net-worth-focused firms called family meetings one of the most effective transfer-planning practices. A later Cerulli study found that most affluent investors were unlikely to keep a benefactor's adviser after an inheritance was completed.
Fidelity's survey offers a possible mechanism for that leakage. A parent may regard signed documents as the end of planning; an adult child may still know little about the intended responsibilities or the people managing the assets. Firms that wait for the transfer event have to compete for the heir after the incumbent advantage has weakened.
The results need careful limits. It is an association, not proof that a family discussion caused confidence or kept assets at Fidelity. Respondents with organized finances may be more willing to talk and more confident for the same underlying reason. Fidelity sponsored the research and sells planning and advisory services, while the study measured self-reported peace of mind rather than transfer errors, tax savings, account retention, or revenue.
That counterargument does not erase the operational question. Fidelity found that more than half of people with completed plans still lacked high peace of mind, and more than four in 10 respondents worth over $5 million reported only moderate or low peace of mind. The next evidence worth watching is not another confidence survey. It is whether Fidelity's planning interactions keep rising, whether net asset flows hold up as transfers accelerate, and whether public rivals disclose better retention of spouses and heirs.
