Behind the Great Wealth Transfer: Citizens bets on business owners

A large share of the Great Wealth Transfer is tied up in businesses, says Paul Casey, head of Citizens Wealth Management. He argues that piece of the intergenerational shift needs more attention from advisors.

“If you think about the great wealth transfer that we've all read about and talked about … a high percentage of that great wealth transfer is currently embedded with business owners,” he told InvestmentNews. “And so how do we help them think through the issue of the day, the long-term strategic planning of tomorrow that they will all be facing and dealing with.”

This, he explained, could be related to acquisitions, growing their business, divesting of their business, or protecting their business.

Casey explained that the company hired a team earlier this year, which is led by Mike Herron, head of insurance solutions at Citizens Private Wealth, to handle this type of scenario. “That's exactly what they do,” he said, of the Business Consulting Services team. “They meet with business owners and they go through deep discovery and they help guide them on meeting near and long-term needs.”

Certainly, the various numbers associated with the Great Wealth Transfer are mind-boggling. In 2024 Cerulli Associates projected that $124 trillion in wealth will be transferred through 2048. A year earlier, Visual Capitalist produced a diagram that showed $156 trillion in U.S. assets by generation, based on data from Cerulli and the Federal Reserve. Private business accounted for $17 trillion, according to Visual Capitalist, or more than 10% of total U.S. assets.

Casey joined Citizens Financial Group from Morgan Stanley in 2024 to lead its wealth management push and highlighted the company’s many strands as key to supporting wealth and business clients.

“We have a fully robust commercial bank, capital markets, research, M&A, treasury solutions, commercial sales, of course, we have millions of customers in our consumer bank,” he told InvestmentNews. “We have a robust business banking effort, so we support businesses of every size up through upper middle market – then we have this private bank that we've been building for the last three years, and we have this wealth business that I've been hired to come in and grow and develop.”

Citizens is in the midst of a big private wealth push. Earlier today it added a Tampa-based advisory team that oversaw more than $1 billion in assets as it looks to expand its presence in the sunshine state. “Florida in general, is important — there's a tremendous amount of wealth, there's a tremendous amount of business ownership,” said Casey. “We have private bank offices in West Palm [Beach] and Palm Beach, we have a commercial banking office in Tampa, that's exactly where this team will be sitting.”

The MacLellan Bickle Wealth Partners deal marks Citizens’ 12th advisory addition across the U.S. since 2024. In June Citizens Private Wealth added an $800 million Santa Monica-based advisory team and, last year, brought in a $1.5 billion New York team. Citizens Private Wealth now has 16 advisory teams around the country and has built a presence that encompasses San Francisco, Southern California, New York, Boston, as well as Florida.

“I would say we are targeting where we currently have flags and footprint as a top priority,” said Casey. “We will continue to invest thoughtfully in adjacent markets to our existing footprint and then we're constantly evolving our thoughts around truly expansionary efforts into new markets.”