Study: only 14% of wealthier U.S. widows change advisors

Ken Kehrer, founder of the Kehrer Group, and Luke Allchin, director at RFI Global, used RFI’s MacroMonitor database to analyze widow behavior in the United States. They identified roughly 7.3 million widows, including about 1.6 million who had been widowed in the past two years. The study focused on households that are saving or investing for retirement or are already retired and that hold $150,000 or more in financial assets. Within that group, nearly 14% of recent widows changed or dropped a financial advisor. Across all investing households, the rate of advisor change was about 5%.

Kehrer and Allchin reviewed archival material connected to the widely cited 70% figure. They located an out-of-print report with a small sample and limited documentation. The researchers concluded that some survey items in the original work likely referred to dropping a particular professional, such as a life insurance agent after a claim, rather than ending a relationship with a comprehensive financial advisor.

The researchers noted the 14% estimate applies to the defined sample and is substantially lower than the 70% number that has circulated in the industry. Advisory leaders who reviewed the analysis urged firms to avoid relying on the older statistic while continuing work to engage surviving spouses.

Regina McCann Hess, president and financial advisor at Forge Wealth Management in Malvern, Pennsylvania, recommended that surviving partners avoid major financial decisions in the first year after a partner’s death. On her Women & Wealth podcast she advised calling an attorney to assemble a practical list of tasks for the first 90 days and postponing major financial or professional changes until later.

The researchers also reported household decision patterns that may affect whether a surviving spouse keeps the family advisor. In the households most likely to have an advisor, decision-making often rested primarily with the husband before his death. Kehrer raised the possibility that households where the wife had little prior involvement in financial matters could be more likely to change advisors after widowhood and noted that such households may also have higher incomes.

Kehrer and his collaborators described their work as a starting point for further study and called for richer data on advisor-client interactions, household decision-making patterns, and how grief and timing affect financial choices.