By Emily Cisek, The Financial Brand
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Here is a bank customer I think about all the time: someone sitting at the kitchen table a week after the funeral of a loved one, surrounded by the pieces of a life they’re now responsible for untangling.
A drawer of old statements. A phone they can’t unlock. And (believe it or not) no idea where the will is, or whether one exists at all.
This person is walking into a branch, or calling their bank for guidance, every single day in this country. And in most cases, the bank that was trusted for decades never had a chance to help them prepare for the one transition that was always going to come.
This intersection is precisely where many community banks are looking to as a once-in-a-generation opportunity looms:
Need to Know:
- 56% of Americans lack an estate plan, and $124 trillion in wealth will change hands by 2048.
- Community banks are recognizing legacy planning as a strategic opportunity to deepen customer relationships, retain assets across generations, and differentiate in a crowded market.
- A recent $2.5M investment from 22nd State Banking Company signals growing conviction in the category.
- According to the 2025 Caring.com Wills and Estate Planning Study, 56 percent of American adults have no estate planning documents at all. No will. No trust. No power of attorney. Over 50 percent of respondents reported not having even thought about starting the process.
The report shows that will ownership is at roughly one in four adults, and the number has declined since 2022. The top reason people give for not having one is disarmingly honest: they just haven’t gotten around to it.
Meanwhile, Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion in U.S. household wealth will change hands by 2048, estimating $105 trillion of that flowing directly to heirs. U.S. states already return nearly $5 billion annually in unclaimed assets from forgotten accounts and abandoned pensions.
Why this matters: As the gap between will ownership and wealth transfer accelerates, more estates will move through probate without clear documentation — creating legal costs, tax inefficiencies, and delays that can quietly erode generational wealth.
For financial institutions, this is where the opportunity sharpens. Every family that gets organized ahead of time is a household whose deposits, lending relationships, and generational loyalty stay connected to the institution that helped them prepare.
What’s at stake? The scale of what is coming is extraordinary. The banks recognizing this are not just solving a customer problem, they are building the kind of multigenerational relevance that defines the next era of community banking.