I Invest in Companies That Profit When People Plan. Most People Don't.

I invest in companies that profit when people plan for death. Not literally — I don't sell estate plans. I buy stock in the firms that do.

Here's the number that sits beside that identity: 56% to 76% of Americans don't have a will. Depending on who you ask — Trust & Will's 2026 survey says 56%, Caring.com's 2025 count says 76% — between three-fifths and three-quarters of American adults will die without telling anyone what happens to their money.

The viral title that started this research — "My best friend died without a will, her neglectful family gets everything" — is not an outlier. It's the baseline.

This isn't a story about grief. It's a story about money that sits between two states: the wealth that exists and the wealth that gets directed. For financial services companies, only the second part generates revenue.

The Transfer That Isn't Automatic

Cerulli Associates, widely cited by financial advisors and asset managers, projects that roughly will transfer from baby boomers to younger generations through 2045. A more recent Cerulli estimate extends that window to 2048 and raises the total to , with millennials expected to inherit $46 trillion, Gen X $39 trillion, and Gen Z $15 trillion.

The press calls it the "great wealth transfer." Advisors call it an opportunity. Both are right — but neither acknowledges the catch that lives in that 56% to 76% gap.

Wealth only becomes revenue for a financial services company when someone sits down, files documents, opens accounts, and hires advisors. It doesn't happen because a baby boomer turns 80. It happens because that boomer — or their grieving family — decides to engage. And the data suggests most people don't.

The pipeline from accumulated wealth to captured advisory revenue has a leak built into its design.

What Happens When Nobody Planned

When someone dies without a will, state intestacy law writes one for them. The court appoints an administrator. Heirs get determined by statute, not by the dead person's wishes. The estate sits locked in probate — a court-supervised process that takes six months to two years and costs , easily $15,000 or more if contested.

This is important for investors to understand because probate estates don't generate recurring revenue for advisory firms. They generate one-time legal fees for estate attorneys and court filing fees for states. The money sits dormant, then gets distributed quickly to heirs — often into personal bank accounts, not into managed portfolios.

The heirs of unplanned estates are a different story. A Citizens Bank survey found that think they're likely to inherit within five years — 55% of millennials, 41% of Gen Z. But , and .

Here's the mechanism: the heirs who do seek professional help create new advisory relationships. The ones who don't — and that's most of them — leave assets unmanaged. The financial services industry's growth story depends on converting a skeptical, overwhelmed generation of heirs into engaged clients. That conversion rate is the hidden variable inside the $84 trillion headline.

The Companies That Sit in the Current

Two publicly traded companies sit directly in this current: Ameriprise Financial (AMP) and Northern Trust (NTRS). They're positioned differently, but both depend on the same underlying dynamic — getting people to plan before they die, and getting heirs to hire them after.

Ameriprise operates as a mass-affluent advisory firm with more than 10,000 financial advisors nationwide. At the end of the first quarter of 2026, it managed (AUMA), up 12% year over year. For full-year 2025, adjusted operating EPS was , up 14% from 2024. The Advice & Wealth Management segment alone generated $3.2 billion in adjusted operating revenue with a 29.3% pretax margin.

Ameriprise's business model is built on converting planning anxiety into ongoing relationships. The company explicitly markets estate planning, retirement income strategies, and wealth transfer services. Its advisors earn a record $1.12 million in annual revenue each. The company is literally selling solutions to the gap described above.

Northern Trust operates on the other end of the spectrum. It's an institutional custody and trust administrator — the company that holds and manages money on behalf of other financial institutions, pension funds, and family offices. For fiscal 2025, Northern Trust reported total assets of , and a return on equity of .

Northern Trust doesn't chase individual retail clients. It serves the infrastructure layer — the institutions that hold the trusts, estates, and endowments created by wealth planners. When a family creates a trust or a foundation receives a planned inheritance, Northern Trust's systems and people are often managing the underlying assets.

Both companies have run hard into the same bull market. Ameriprise's stock trades around $552, up 12.5% year-to-date and up roughly 25% over the past four months. Northern Trust has surged roughly 37% YTD, with Q2 2026 revenue up 35% year-over-year to $2.71 billion. The market is already pricing in wealth transfer optimism.

The Numbers Behind the Momentum

Ameriprise's financial machine deserves attention on its own terms. The company generates roughly $8 billion in free cash flow over the trailing twelve months, growing 20% year over year. It returned in 2025 — 88% of its adjusted operating earnings — through dividends and buybacks. Its adjusted operating return on equity was in 2025 — exceptional and sustained.

The total debt figure of $191.5 billion looks alarming until you understand the structure: most of it consists of insurance and annuity contract liabilities — obligations to policyholders, not bondholders. The net debt picture is closer to $6.5 billion, which is manageable against $10.3 billion in cash.

The question for investors isn't whether Ameriprise can execute its business model. The question is whether the $84 trillion wealth transfer tailwind is large enough to sustain this growth trajectory as the most boomer deaths accelerate in the early 2030s, or whether the current run-up has already priced in the best of the transfer.

The Risk That Lives in the Gap

Three things could change the math:

The conversion rate problem. Even if $84 trillion transfers, advisory firms only earn revenue on assets that come to them. The Citizens Bank data — 83% distrust of advisors, 29% wanting at least $1 million in inheritance before seeking help — suggests that a large share of transferred wealth may never reach an advisory account. Robo-advisors, AI tools (61% of Americans are open to them), and social media advice (51% have acted on it) are competing for the same heirs. The fee revenue the wealth transfer implies is an upper bound, not a guaranteed floor — and the actual capture rate is uncertain.

The valuation question. At $552 per share, Ameriprise trades at roughly 14x forward EPS. That's not cheap for a financial services company, and the stock has already climbed 25% over the past four months and 12% on the year. Northern Trust at roughly $185 has surged 37% YTD after posting Q2 revenue growth of 35%. The market has done some serious pricing in. If the wealth transfer plays out slower than consensus — because heirs don't engage, because AI disrupts advisory fees, or because market volatility erodes AUM — these multiples have room to compress.

The demographic counterweight. McKinsey projects that the share of the U.S. population at retirement age will rise from 19% in 2025 to 22% by 2040. That's the same aging population that's transferring wealth — and it's also a population that needs more healthcare, more long-term care, and more income support. The wealth transfer isn't just moving assets between accounts. It's being consumed by the costs of aging, which reduces the net amount available for advisory management.

What This Means for Your Watch List

The wealth transfer is real. The scale is unprecedented. But the gap between "wealth that will be inherited" and "wealth that will be managed by public financial services companies" is wide and uncertain.

Ameriprise and Northern Trust are legitimate businesses with real momentum — rising AUM, expanding margins, and a demographic tailwind that will persist for a decade. Their problem isn't execution. It's that the market's optimism about the wealth transfer may exceed the rate at which unplanned American estates actually become managed advisory assets.

For an investor who doesn't hold these stocks, the question is whether you believe advisory firms will capture enough of that $84 trillion to justify current prices — or whether the 56% to 76% who never plan will quietly cap the upside. The evidence doesn't answer that. It only makes the gap visible.

The number I started with still applies. I invest in companies that profit when people plan. And most people don't.