Edward Jones as the Next High Net Worth Powerhouse? Family Office as-a-Service in Action.
- Kendrick Wakeman, CFA
- Mar 15
- 2 min read
Edward Jones announced that they are launching Edward Jones Generations™, a High-Net-Worth platform bringing Family Office-like services to clients with a minimum account size of only $10mm. This is one of the latest, and perhaps most excellent, examples of the Family Office as-a-Service Theme (see WealthTech Strategy Themes for the Rest of the Decade). It is about using the power of technology to scale the high-touch/low-scale services you might find at a family office and delivering them lower down the wealth chain. By the sounds of the product brand name, it seems like they will also use it as a play on engaging the next generation. If so, it makes sense.
In this case, it is about expanding their UHNW consulting efforts, currently housed in their Client Consultation Group, down-market to their upper HNW population. They have not told us (yet) what their population of $10mm+ net worth clients is vs the population of $25mm+ net worth clients, but our best guess is that it might triple the number of clients receiving these services currently.[i] We will update if they do tell us or someone comes up with something better. That does not include attracting new $10mm+ accounts with the new service, which is a key part of their stated goal as well. If they can further lower their minimum to $1mm+, which we think is very achievable, it could represent another increase of 1700% or so to 500,000+ accounts.[ii]
The specific additional services that they mentioned offering (so far) are:
· Tax Planning & Prep
· Estate Planning
· Trust Planning
· Philanthropic Solutions
· Business Succession Planning
· Lending
· Cash Management
Link to press release
Link to WealthTech Themes for the Rest of the Decade
[i] Extrapolating from an average account base assumption of $90k on 8mm accounts along the curve 4E+12^x-1.158