Willing is not ready

Willing is not ready

Two surveys landed in one week, from an insurer and a bank, and gave the same answer: the next generation says yes, the family has no plan. Private banking has a revenue model for the asset and none for the readiness. The autumn’s created seats are the first attempt to change that.

On Monday a Hong Kong-based insurer published a survey of family businesses in six Asian markets. Six days earlier a Zurich bank published a survey of the professionals who advise the world’s wealthiest families. Neither firm would call the other a competitor. They reached the same conclusion from opposite ends: the people who are meant to inherit are willing, and the families who are meant to hand over are not ready. The distance between those two words is where the next decade of this industry’s advisory revenue sits, and almost nobody is paid to close it.

Two surveys, one answer

Sun Life’s Passing the Torch 2026, fielded in August across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, drew more than 3,000 respondents, 406 of them from family businesses. Seventy-eight per cent of next-generation members say they are willing to take over. Twenty-six per cent of the businesses have a fully developed succession plan. The barrier original owners name most often is the successor’s lack of preparation or experience, up from 28 to 39 per cent in a year; and among the next generation who hesitate, 23 per cent now cite a lack of digital innovation in the business, up from 10 per cent. David Broom, Sun Life Asia’s chief client and distribution officer, put the finding in one line: willingness and readiness are different things.

Julius Baer’s Family Barometer 2026, its sixth edition and the first produced with EY, asked a different population — more than 700 financial professionals who advise ultra-high-net-worth families — and got a harsher reading. Only 2.3 per cent of business-owning families are considered fully ready for a sale or transfer; 56.3 per cent are somewhat prepared; 29.5 per cent are not ready at all. Only 22.6 per cent of the next generation are judged ready and fully equipped to take over. The obstacle named by 80 per cent of advisers is not tax, which 55.4 per cent cite, but a lack of family alignment. Just 18.5 per cent of families give the next generation an equal say in a sale; 45.6 per cent consult them without a vote.

Read them together. The clients say the heir is willing. The advisers say the heir is not ready and the family has not agreed. They are describing the same households.

What the book says

The third number of the week is about money rather than people, and it points the same way. Citi Wealth’s white paper with RFI Global, published on Tuesday, reports that 72 per cent of onshore affluent assets in Singapore and 74 per cent of offshore-booked assets sit in cash and liquid deposits, with 26 to 28 per cent in investments. Mutual-fund ownership among Singapore HNW investors has tripled, from 11 per cent in 2022 to 31 per cent in 2026, ahead of India at 24, South Korea at 17 and Hong Kong at 16. Average HNW client assets in Singapore rose 6 per cent on the year to US$1.5 million.

The point is not the asset mix. It is that the client who has not written a succession plan has not invested three-quarters of the balance sheet either. The two gaps are one gap. A family that has not decided what it is for has no reason to decide what it should own. Every banker who has sat across from a founder with a large cash balance and a vague answer about the children knows this. The surveys put a number on it.

The seat nobody has priced

Last week Lighthouse Canton’s Charlene Lin told Global Private Banker that bankers are assessed by “AUM and revenue”, not by the value they create. That is the industry’s compensation model in six words, and it explains why the readiness gap persists. The work that closes it — a governance structure, a family that has agreed, a next-generation programme, a shareholder agreement the heirs have read — produces no net new money in the quarter it is done. Worse, it can produce an exit, and an exit produces a liquidity event that goes to tender. The adviser who builds readiness may hand the asset to a competitor. Nobody has been paid to do that, so, by and large, it has not been done.

That is why the seats that interest us this autumn are not the coverage hires. Of the fourteen created seats on our ledger since 24 August, two are explicitly advisory by title: Schroders Wealth Management’s head of wealth advisory for Asia, reported on 14 October, and Bank of Singapore’s head of Sustainability Partners, announced on 22 October. HSBC named a global head of family offices in September and an APAC head of family and philanthropy advisory the same month. On Tuesday J.P. Morgan Private Bank gave Oliver Turner, a managing director, an expanded brief as head of investments and advice for Australia and Indonesia — a market seat with the word “advice” in the title.

None of those titles says succession. All of them are a bank deciding to pay a senior person for something other than the book. After this week the ledger stands at 71 senior moves since late August, 45 of them structural or platform seats against 26 classic coverage moves. The advisory seats are a small fraction of the structural column. They are the fraction to watch, because they are the only part of the industry’s hiring that is aimed at the 78 per cent rather than the 2.3.

The counterweight

The case against this argument is strong and deserves full weight.

First, consider who is asking. An insurer that sells legacy and estate products has found that families lack plans. A bank that sells wealth planning has found that families are unprepared. Neither finding is wrong, but neither firm was ever going to publish the opposite. The Julius Baer sample is advisers rather than families: 700 professionals rating their own clients’ readiness, which is also a rating of their own unfinished work. Sun Life’s 406 family-business respondents across six markets are meaningful, not definitive. “Ready” is defined in neither survey.

Second, cash may be rational. A Singapore affluent client holding 72 per cent in deposits in 2026 has had positive real rates for most of three years. Fund ownership tripled over the same period. The book is moving; it is moving at the client’s pace rather than the bank’s, which is not the same as a readiness problem.

Third, and most important for the readers of this publication, the market still pays for the book. Twenty-six of the 71 senior moves we have logged since August are classic coverage moves. On Monday Asian Private Banker reported, citing sources, that eight private bankers are leaving one Swiss house in Singapore — a group head for Greater China and two team heads among them — with no destinations given and no confirmation from the bank. If confirmed, that is the oldest trade in the business, done at full speed, in the same week the surveys appeared. A created advisory seat is a cost line. A coverage team moved is a revenue line. Boards know which one they will be asked about.

Fourth, an advisory seat without a revenue line is the first seat cut when a cost programme bites. This industry has built family-office, philanthropy and planning functions before, in better years, and dismantled them in worse ones. The seats created this autumn have not yet lived through a bad year.

What we will count

The thesis is that the readiness gap is becoming a priced seat, and that the pricing will show up as created advisory seats rather than coverage hires. That is testable, so we will test it. From this edition every created seat on the ledger carries a second tag: advisory, coverage or platform-other. The fourteen created seats to date will be published with that tag alongside the route-in back-book on Friday 27 November. The claim on the record is this: by the end of the first quarter of 2027 the ledger will show at least five created advisory seats in Asia at banks or independents, against two today. Fewer than three and the thesis has failed, and we will say so.

One more thing worth saying plainly. The 78 per cent are the clients your successors will have. The 2.3 per cent are the clients you have now. The seat that connects them has a title at two houses, perhaps four. It does not yet have a bonus pool.

Friday: UBS reports its third quarter today and the Chancellor delivers the Budget today; Asian Private Banker’s eight-banker report awaits confirmation. The Operator’s View grades all three, counts the Swiss strategy silence at week 12 if nothing has been said, carries your verdict on the route into your market head’s seat, and opens the second cohort of the second-round count on 2 November.

Private Banking Life is written and published by Steve Slater, founder of an executive search practice in private banking. It is compiled entirely from public sources. Nothing learned through search work — from clients or candidates — ever appears in this publication.

Sources this edition: Global Private Banker, 22, 26 and 27 October 2026; Julius Baer media release and finews.com, 20 October 2026; Asian Private Banker, 14 and 26 October 2026; finews.asia, 23 September 2026; HSBC announcement, 9 September 2026. Figures are as published by the issuing firm; survey findings are reported, not endorsed.