Practice Growth
Key takeaway: Estate planners and planned giving officers are feeling very optimistic about their practices these days. Why? Because they’re so darn busy!
Seven out of 10 (71%) surveyed estate planners and planned giving officers expected their entities to grow in 2021. In fact, two in five estate planners and giving officers (40%) expect to grow
by
double-digits in 2021 (that is, by 10% or more). To put that into perspective, less than three in 10 estate planners (29%) expected double-digit growth at this time a year ago.
Wakeup Call
Potential tax upheaval and likely lowering of the estate tax exemption is driving more clients to planners’ doors. Also, COVID-19 woke up a lot of people to the fragility of life. When we see 40-year-old friends and 30-year-old coworkers dying in the hospital, there’s a heightened sense of one’s own mortality. Everyone knows someone who died unexpectedly or was in crisis mode during the darkest days of the pandemic. It’s especially sad to see young and middle-aged adults gravely ill in the hospital without having health care powers of attorney identified. Talk about a huge wakeup call.