The Great Wealth Transfer is on the horizon, which will mark a shift of up to $90 trillion from baby boomers to the next generations. During this time, financial advisors must be prepared to help one generation leave a legacy while helping another navigate a windfall.

While not every client situation is going to involve large financial gifts, advisors still need to be ready when it happens to make sure the asset transition is seamless. And there are three important steps advisors should take to create a plan, connect with the next generation and continue to guide families in their financial journey.

Step No. 1: Help Aging Clients Determine Their Legacy Objectives
First, advisors will have to start discussions with aging clients about their unique retirement aspirations and legacy goals. These conversations should be comprehensive and personalized, covering all aspects of a client’s financial circumstances. The clients will have to answer difficult but necessary questions: For instance, how do they want their wealth to influence their chosen causes and affect their loved ones after they’re gone? And how do these aims work with their other goals, like maintaining a retirement lifestyle?

One way to talk about this is with “interactive scenario modeling.” This is when you let clients visualize different financial scenarios based on their objectives—for instance, whether they want to fund their grandchildren’s education, support charitable organizations or ensure the intentional passing of their wealth. Such modeling offers clarity and gives clients confidence in their plans.

By walking clients through potential courses of action and trade-offs, you put their financial decisions in the context of their broader objectives. Not only is this a powerful way to help them zero in on their desired legacy plan, but it gives them a true sense of ownership since they helped create it.

Advisors who plan collaboratively create a smoother path for wealth transfer.

Step No. 2: Conduct Joint Meetings With Clients And Heirs
A critical step for advisors when dealing with wealth transfer is conducting meetings among wealthy clients and inviting their family member heirs. These meetings are essential for several reasons: They ensure that the legacy plan you create will be built on solid footing and that everybody understands it. Such meetings also help you educate heirs. Later, the strong relationships you have built with the younger generation will help you retain assets under management.

And by engaging both your clients and their heirs, you’ll further ensure that your client’s wishes are understood and respected by the next generation. Such collaborative meetings foster communication and transparency and bolster family cohesion about wealth management decisions. By addressing any questions and concerns face-to-face, you can help defuse any misunderstanding or potential disputes down the line.

Visual aids will be a great help at these meetings. It’s beneficial to use estate plan flowcharts, which are invaluable in breaking complex planning concepts down into digestible pieces of information. Whether you’re outlining asset distribution or trust structures, visual aids make otherwise intricate information more comprehensible.

Financial decisions aren’t just about numbers—they’re about people, legacies and futures. These approaches will help you humanize your advice, and thus help the whole family understand the real-life impact of your plan, which means your advice will more deeply resonate, fostering family trust and a shared commitment to the agreed-upon financial strategies.

Step No. 3: Conduct Individual Meetings With The Next Generation
The last, yet equally critical step for advisors navigating the Great Wealth Transfer is holding one-on-one meetings with next generation members as well. This goes for mass affluent clients as well as high-net-worth clients. Such meetings are pivotal in building meaningful relationships with people who might eventually become your clients if they aren’t already. In such encounters you can demonstrate things that will affect their financial futures, for instance the way an inheritance could affect their goals.

Even if you’ve already met next-generation clients in a family setting, a one-on-one meeting gives them a way to ask questions and express concerns in a private setting. This will help you understand their unique financial perspectives and goals—an essential step in showing them how an influx of money will impact their lives.

Handling both older and newer generations means you must be able to offer a full complement of services—and demonstrate the ways you can handle both the complex financial needs of wealthy clients while also being nimble enough to address the more straightforward, evolving needs of their younger heirs.

People have different demands on them at different stages of their lives (and when they’re at different wealth levels). Advisors and their tool kits must be versatile enough to cater to these different needs.

One of the things that can help is planning software with interactive scenario modeling, a suite of easily digestible reports and tools that will aid you in continuous client collaboration and strengthen your relationships with young family members. These features will be invaluable in helping demystify the wealth-transfer process while helping clients make wise use of the inheritance they’ll receive.

Two Sides
As the Great Wealth Transfer unfolds, financial advisors will be tasked with facilitating a smooth transition of wealth between generations. That gives them a great opportunity to bolster existing relationships, build new ones and continue to manage family wealth for many years to come.

There are two sides to this story.

Joshua Belfiore is manager of group product management at eMoney Advisor.