The 97 Percent Problem and Why Wealth Fails Beyond the Numbers
- Apr 15
- 4 min read
Tami Saito is a strategist and executive positioning expert. Founder of FlowScore and creator of frameworks to solve complex problems. She helps C‑suite leaders, independent consultants, and mentors turn experience into numbers, escape “invisible expert” status, and build data‑driven, premium, authentic personal brands with predictable revenue.
There is a number that should unsettle every family office, every wealth advisor, and every executive who has ever thought seriously about legacy. 97%. That is the percentage of intergenerational wealth transfer failures caused by factors that have nothing to do with finance.
Not market downturns. Not poor investment decisions. Not tax miscalculations, but communication. Trust. Preparation. Mission. The invisible architecture that holds everything together or lets it collapse.
The study no one can ignore
Roy Williams and Vic Preisser spent twenty years tracking 3,250 families through wealth transitions. Their findings, published in Preparing Heirs, remain the most comprehensive dataset on why family wealth disappears. 70% of wealth transfers fail by the second generation. 90% by the third.
The breakdown of causes is what matters:
60% – collapse of communication and trust within the family.
25% – inadequately prepared heirs.
12% – absence of a shared family mission. 3% professional advisor failures.
The financial planning was sound. The trusts were structured. The portfolios were diversified. What was missing had no name, no number, and no protection.
The gap I saw before I had language for it
I did not find this research in a library. I found it in my own family. My family built, prospered, and faced one of the deepest crises an entrepreneurial family can endure. When the financial patrimony was tested, what sustained the crossing was not on any balance sheet. It was the name my grandparents had built. The knowledge. The relationships. The values that preceded the wealth and outlasted the crisis.
At the time, I had no framework for what I was witnessing. I simply observed that the assets that mattered most were the ones no one had planned to protect.
Years later, when my son was born, the question became personal and urgent: if I left the room tomorrow, what would remain of what I had built? Not my portfolio. My expertise. My network. My reputation. The intangible capital that generated every opportunity I had ever received.
The answer was uncomfortable, all of it was invisible, unmeasured, and entirely dependent on my physical presence.
The intangible estate of wealth
James E. Hughes Jr. identified five forms of family capital: human, intellectual, social, financial, and spiritual. The wealth management industry has built an entire infrastructure around one of them. The other four are addressed, at best, with a family retreat and a mission statement exercise.
James Grubman, who spent decades working with families from the Forbes 400, offered a different lens. Families that acquire wealth, he argued, are like immigrants arriving in a new country, the "Land of Wealth." They must adapt to a culture they did not grow up in. And they must prepare their children to navigate a world the parents never experienced as children.
He identified three patterns:
Denial: Pretending nothing has changed.
Assimilation: Abandoning the values that built the wealth.
Integration: Balancing heritage with opportunity.
The families that prosper across generations are the ones that integrate. They do not merely transfer assets. They transfer context, values, and the capacity to steward what was built. They transfer the map, not just the territory.
What is missing
The corporate world solved this decades ago, at least partially. Ocean Tomo's research shows that over 90% of the S&P 500's market value now sits in intangible assets, patents, brand equity, intellectual property, and human capital. Aswath Damodaran at NYU Stern has spent his career building frameworks to value what does not appear on a traditional balance sheet.
For companies, intangible valuation is standard practice. For individuals, it does not exist. The executive with 25 years of expertise who does not know how to price an advisory engagement. The founder whose reputation opens every door but appears in no succession plan. The leader whose network is worth more than most portfolios but has never been mapped, measured, or made transferable.
These are not abstractions. These are real economic assets generating real value with no system to protect them.
A different approach
This is the gap that led me to create the Flow Score™. It is the first methodology designed to value personal intangible assets not as metaphor, but as a structured, measurable system organized around four capitals:
Knowledge: What you know and how you apply it. The expertise that makes a two-hour advisory session worth more than a month of generic consulting.
Relationships: Who trusts you and who you can access. The network that opens doors no recruiter, no platform, and no algorithm can replicate.
Reputation: How the market perceives you when you are not in the room. The asset that puts your name on a shortlist before anyone makes a call.
Legacy: What remains after you. How your knowledge, network, and reputation are structured to survive your direct involvement and transfer to the next generation.
Each of these can be assessed. Each can be developed with intention. And each can be made transferable, which is precisely what traditional succession planning fails to do.
The question worth asking
Williams and Preisser gave us the data. Hughes gave us the framework. Grubman gave us the metaphor. What has been missing is the tool.
A system that takes the intangible, the reputation, the knowledge, the network, the capacity to transfer meaning across generations, and gives it the same rigor we apply to financial assets.
Because 97% is not a statistic. It is a warning, and the families that heed it will not be the ones with the best financial plans. They will be the ones who understand that the most valuable estate is the one no attorney can draft.
Read more from Tami Saito
Tami Saito, Founder of Flow Score | Frameworks Designer
Tami Saito is a strategist and executive positioning expert focused on high‑trust markets. She is the founder of FlowScore and creator of frameworks that solve complex positioning and pricing problems for experts. Tami helps C‑suite leaders, independent consultants, and mentors turn experience into numbers, escape “invisible expert” status, and build data‑driven, premium, and authentic personal brands with predictable revenue.
