The 87/6 Problem: Why Your Wealthiest Clients Aren't Getting What They Actually Want

There's a single number I think about more than any other in wealth management right now.

87%.

That's the percentage of high-net-worth clients who say they want charitable and philanthropic planning from their financial advisor. It comes from a 2021 Spectrem Group study of affluent households and it's stood up in every follow-up study since.

Then there's the number that tells you what's actually happening.

6%.

That's how many of those clients report receiving it.

If you run the math, you're looking at a 14:1 ratio between demand and delivery. Eighty-seven wealthy families want this conversation. Six are getting it. Eighty-one families are sitting across from their advisor, waiting to talk about the meaning of their money, and leaving those meetings without having had it.

This is the 87/6 problem. And almost nobody is talking about it.

The gap isn't willingness. It's tooling.

Here's the part that surprises most people. Advisors aren't refusing to have this conversation. The overwhelming majority want to.

A 2022 Schwab Advisor Services study found that fewer than 30% of advisors feel confident discussing charitable strategies beyond tax implications. Not 30% who won't. 30% who feel equipped. The other 70% want to lead this conversation but don't know how.

This tracks with something else we know. A CAGP/KCI study found that 90% of advisors think they're having meaningful philanthropy conversations with their clients. Only 13% of those clients agree. Advisors think the conversation is happening. Clients don't feel it.

The gap isn't disinterest. It's infrastructure.

Advisors have world-class tools for every other part of their practice. Portfolio management software. Tax planning tools. Estate planning platforms. CRM systems. Compliance infrastructure. Philanthropy is the one area where they're still improvising — working from a blank page, a generic PDF survey, or a three-hour facilitated session that nobody wants to sit through.

What the 87/6 gap actually costs

Gaps between client demand and advisor delivery don't stay gaps. They become switching behavior.

80% of heirs fire their parents' wealth advisor after inheriting. The reasons most often cited: lack of values alignment, outdated digital tools, and a relationship that didn't include the next generation. Every one of those reasons ties back to the philanthropy conversation. The values conversation is where families build shared language. It's where the next generation gets pulled into the relationship. It's where the advisor stops being "mom and dad's money guy" and starts being a trusted partner to the whole family.

Without that conversation, the advisor is working with one generation of a family. With it, they're working with two or three.

There's also the asset-capture angle. A Foundation Source study found that 57% of advisors who originated the idea of a private foundation with their client also ended up managing the foundation's assets. For donor-advised funds, it was 29%. The conversation leads to the asset. The asset leads to the fee. The fee compounds over decades.

Meanwhile, holistic wealth planners — advisors who explicitly offer services beyond investment management — grow AUM at a 45% higher rate than advisors who don't. The philanthropy conversation isn't charity work. It's one of the strongest predictors of AUM growth in the research.

Why 6% and not 60%

If the data is this clear, why is the gap still 87/6 and not narrowing?

Three reasons.

One, the existing tools don't scale. The best philanthropic planning in the industry is done by specialty consultants — firms like Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Bridgespan, and the National Center for Family Philanthropy. Their work is excellent. It's also time-intensive, expensive, and built for ultra-wealthy families with significant philanthropic budgets. You can't deploy it across a book of 100 clients.

Two, the PDF survey doesn't work. Some advisors have moved the conversation online using Typeform or SurveyMonkey, or they rely on static PDF worksheets. The survey captures data points but doesn't synthesize them into a narrative or connect values to actual organizations. The advisor still has to do the heavy lifting afterward, and most don't have the time.

Three, the "ask and wing it" approach breaks at scale. The most common advisor strategy is to ask a few questions in meetings and recommend organizations based on experience. This works when the advisor has deep philanthropic expertise and a small caseload. It doesn't scale, it's not repeatable, and the "plan" lives in the advisor's head rather than in a document the client can hold, share, or revisit.

None of these approaches connect values to real charity data. None of them include due diligence. None of them produce a living document. And none of them scale to the whole book.

That's why the gap is 87/6 and not 60/40. The tools to close it haven't existed.

What closing it looks like

The 87/6 gap is not a problem of the future. It's a problem of now. Your clients are already having conversations about how to give. They're having them with their spouses, their children, their faith communities. The question isn't whether the conversation happens. It's whether you're in it or outside of it.

The advisor who leads it becomes the one who retains the family across generations, who differentiates from every advisor still selling allocation and performance, and who captures the next-gen relationship before someone else does.

Closing the gap requires three things: a structured process the advisor can repeat across clients, real data that connects values to actual organizations, and a professional deliverable the client can hold. We built WellAdvised for exactly this — a 15-minute guided discovery that produces a professional Philanthropic Profile, backed by due diligence on 85,000 Canadian charities.

But the point isn't WellAdvised specifically. The point is that the 87/6 gap is the single largest underserved market in wealth management, and the advisors who close it — with whatever tool they choose — will define the next era of the industry.

The question isn't whether your clients want this. They do. 87% of them.

The question is whether you're going to be in the 6%.

Ready to close the 87/6 gap in your practice? See how WellAdvised helps advisors deliver the service 87% of clients want. Book a demo or view a sample Philanthropic Profile.