American households became wealthier overall in 2024, but high-net-worth individuals with $5 million or more in assets did disproportionately well, according to new research from Boston-based Cerulli Associates.
The financial insights and consulting firm noted that U.S. household wealth rose 16% year-over-year in 2024 to $90 trillion, which should be a good sign for financial advisors helping clients manage those investments through volatile markets in 2025. Advisors, however, may need to consider their client mix in terms of those assets, as HNW households with at least $5 million did the best, accounting for 54% of the total wealth, $49 trillion.
According to a statement from John McKenna, research analyst at Cerulli, HNW clients tend to need a wider array of services such as estate planning, family offices, and trust management. If advisors don’t offer those services, they may “risk losing them to firms with a renewed commitment to the segment.”
In the meantime, advisors who work with or even specialize in serving households below the HNW tier are now working with a cohort that is seeing its market share of wealth recede. Affluent clients with $2 million to $5 million in assets now make up 17% of the market, and mass affluent clients with $500,000 to $2 million make up about 19% of the market. According to Cerulli, their combined market share of 36% is down from 38% at year-end 2023.
Noah Damsky, founder and principal of Marina Wealth Advisors, a Los Angeles-based firm, agreed with the trend, saying that HNW clients are the biggest growth segment at his firm.
“As equity markets rallied for many years, those with investable assets have grown disproportionately wealthier,” Damsky said. “Naturally, clients with millions of dollars in assets, especially in booming real estate markets such as Los Angeles, have seen their portfolios grow immensely.”
Above and Beyond
Damsky also agreed that serving these clients takes a personal touch that goes beyond traditional wealth management.
He noted a client who wanted to sell a single-family rental property in Beverly Hills to help fund retirement. To get the best sale price, however, Damsky and his team recommended that the client get the current renting tenant out to sell the property to a likely owner-occupant to fetch the best price.
To achieve this, Damsky advised that the client raise the rent to a higher level, anticipating that the tenant would either move out or at least provide a higher return on investment. In the end, the tenant left, and the client sold.
“Who else is going to help the client with this? Not real estate agents or property managers,” Damsky said. “Many attorneys will help with execution but not develop the full strategy. Getting this sort of help is challenging, so we help clients solve their most challenging problems.”
Damsky said that while the HNW space is competitive, experience and expertise allow an advisor to stand out. In his firm’s case, they have an institutional investor background.
“Many advisors still just manage portfolios and masquerade their services as holistic when they’re really not,” he said. “Helping with not only investments, but with tax, estate and generational planning is critical, and it takes time.”
Dann Ryan, founder and managing partner of Sincerus Advisory, a New York City-based RIA, said via email that advisors serving both HNW and mass affluent clients face a tradeoff between “maximizing current profitability with HNW clients versus long-term sustainability of your practice with more affluent clients.”
“When it comes to the affluent and mass affluent segment, for many of them, their biggest financial planning events are still in their future,” Ryan said. “Unlike HNW households, who have likely already completed their estate planning, many affluent clients are still a way off from having to worry about the most complex strategies…. As an advisor, a lot of the work is preparing them to have a decision-making process for those times when there may be a pressing need.”
He said there is a risk that mass-affluent clients will leave for other advisors once they are wealthier, but if the relationship goes well, it can be the best kind.
“For any advisor, the older and most cultivated relationships tend to be the most rewarding,” he said. “And the mass affluent market offers a pretty clear path to those relationships.”
Motivated Clients
Filip Telibasa, owner and planner at Benzina Wealth, a Sarasota-Fla.-based fee-only advisory, works mainly with mass affluent clients, a decision he made after working with HNW clients at firms such as RIA Facet, TIAA, and UBS.
“In terms of this specific demographic of people they are very determined, motivated in their careers, and making more money than they have in the past,” Telibasa said. “There are a lot of planning needs for this group, and they are a bit underserved.
Telibasa sees most advisors as focused on assets under management pricing models, which causes them to gravitate toward HNW clients.
He said that his practice, which is flat fee only, works well for people without many assets but who need to make life decisions such as buying a home, saving for education, or reviewing loan terms.
“I have a bigger impact on the world by sharing insights and helping people when they are younger, and by the time they are closer to retirement, they are in great shape,” he said.
The fee-only advisor believes that, as the younger generation of advisors grows, they’ll be more inclined toward paying for services directly in a world of subscription-based offerings and savvy financial clients.
“That’s the key that the industry has missed for quite some time,” he said. “If we are not just solely thinking about ourselves and how much we can make as an advisor, and if we are being true fiduciaries, we will work with clients when they are younger, and the only way to do that is to make it affordable for them.”
Cerulli noted that the largest asset for most mass-affluent customers is in retirement assets, which amounts to $31.9 trillion in individual retirement accounts and workplace retirement plans.
“With $3 trillion currently housed in retirement accounts under previous employers, there is an opportunity for advisors to bring in these assets through IRA rollovers or guaranteed income plans,” analyst McKenna said.