By Emily Cisek, Founder and CEO of Paige
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.
Where Relationship Banking Comes Alive
If your bank’s value proposition is built on trust and long-term relationships, this is where that promise gets tested and where it can truly shine. Estate planning may not be a bank’s fiduciary obligation, but helping customers feel prepared and supported during life’s biggest transitions is the very definition of relationship banking done well.
Let’s think about what happens when a long-time customer passes away without organized records. The spouse doesn’t know which accounts still exist. The adult children don’t have passwords, can’t find the insurance policies, and have never set foot in the branch. Within months, the deposits move. The relationship that took thirty years to build quickly fades, not because the family wanted to leave, but because no one at the bank ever had a relationship with them in the first place.
Now imagine the alternative. A bank that offered that customer a simple way to organize their documents, name their beneficiaries, and share what mattered most with the people they loved. A bank that, in doing so, also built a connection with the next generation years before the conversation. That is a fundamentally different outcome, and it is within reach.
The research supports this. Cerulli Associates has found that 89 percent of top advisory firms now prioritize generational planning as a core retention strategy. The firms winning the next generation are building those bridges early, before the transition, not after.
Growing Momentum Across the Country
A growing number of community financial institutions that see legacy planning not as a side offering but as a meaningful extension of their customer relationships.
Financial institutions from Connecticut to Hawaii are rolling out legacy planning tools for their customers. The geographic diversity tells its own story: financial institutions across the country are arriving at the same conclusion. Investing in relationships has value that compounds over the long term.
Recently, this momentum reached a new milestone. 22nd State Banking Company, a community banking enterprise based in Alabama, announced a $2.5 million strategic investment in Paige. It is one thing for a community bank to license a fintech tool. It is entirely different to invest capital and take a seat at the table, and it signals a conviction that legacy planning is becoming a strategic priority for the future of community banking.
The broader industry is aligning. The Federal Reserve has published guidance supporting community bank-fintech partnerships as a path to responsible innovation. As Alloy Labs CEO Jason Henrichs wrote in The Financial Revolutionist, the wealth transfer is not a single event on the horizon. It is a decades-long transition already underway, and the real opportunity is in the years of planning that come before it.
An Invitation for Financial Leaders
The largest wealth transfer in history is happening now, one family at a time. And the banks that step into that moment, that offer their customers a simple, guided way to get organized and protect the people they love, will earn a kind of loyalty that no rate or product feature can replicate.
The institutions leading this charge are making a statement about what they believe banking should be: we are here for the whole life, not just the easy parts. That is a powerful message for today’s customers and an even more powerful one for the next generation, who are watching how their parents’ bank shows up during the moments that matter most.
The opportunity is here, it is growing, and it belongs to the institutions ready to lead with both heart and strategy.
