They love watching dancer and social media personality Charli D’Amelio, TikTok’s top U.S star, cradle a gold-sequined Prada handbag, and learning how to bake “cloud bread.”
“They” is Generation Z, and the 70 million-strong cohort stands to inherit at least tens of billions of dollars and assets from their parents and grandparents in coming decades. Yet 1 in 3 members may get their financial advice not from professional wealth planners, but from TikTok and YouTube, platforms permeated with myths, misperceptions and outright falsehoods dispensed by so-called experts.
The cohort, along with millennials (what Fidelity Investments calls “Gen Y”), comprised nearly half, or 47%, of the U.S. population in 2021, but only 14% of all advisory clients, Fidelity’s 2022 Investor Insights Study shows.
As the wealth management industry sifts through a mountain of data on how these potential future clients save, spend and invest, one thing is clear: Born after 1996, Gen Z is the first cohort to have never known a world without the internet and smartphones. Here’s what financial advisors need to know about their future client base, the oldest of whom are now 26.