Older women are getting richer. How will wealth managers adapt?

ELLA PRICHARD found herself rebuilding the family fortune after Lev, her husband of 46 years, died during the global financial crisis. She went from having little to do with the finances to firing the family’s longtime advisers at JPMorgan Chase, interviewing banks and eventually hiring a team at Brown Brothers Harriman. “That move from smiling spouse to client was not easy,” the 80-year-old says.Older women like Ms Prichard control a growing share of the world’s wealth. In 1989 the median American household headed by a woman over 65 was poorer than average. By 2019 it was 20% richer. That partly reflects the fact that older women today are more likely to have had careers of their own than their mothers and grandmothers. But inherited wealth also plays a role—and indeed will become more important in the years to come.