There has been a sharp rise in the amount of assets and platform accounts that are linked between family members over the last year on Quilter’s UK platform, Old Mutual Wealth.

In the second quarter the flows into the platform that went into accounts that are linked between different family members were 12.7% of all platform flows. This compares to just 0.5% of flows in the second quarter of 2020.

Old Mutual Wealth allows linked family accounts to benefit from a multiple family member discount, which the platform says has been taken advantage of by 73,000 accounts over the past year.

The platform launched the family linking initiative in February 2020 with no minimum investment and each family member’s charge based on the total value of all product held on the platform by the linked family members.

Karen Blatchford, distribution director at Quilter, said: “There is an estimated £5.5 trillion expected to transfer through the generations in the next 30 years and worryingly 66% of children fire their parents’ financial adviser after they inherit their parents’ wealth. To combat this, the creation of a family office is becoming increasingly popular as financial advisers intensify their focus on intergenerational wealth transfer planning.

“Platforms can work well in this situation by combining the assets held across family members to lower the charges paid by each individual client.

“While spousal linking on platforms is common in the UK, family linking is rarer. We are really pleased to see advisers beginning to make use of family linking and for clients to receive the benefits. The transfer of wealth in the UK means there is a great opportunity for advisers to start to thinking about the future clients, as well as the ones in the here and now, and we feel family linking is a great conversation starter for this.”