Looking for a Man in Finance...
Updated: Jul 20
What Gen X are carrying in their wallets - and why no one is taking notice.
There's a cohort running FTSE 100 boardrooms, controlling nearly a quarter of global spending, and they’re first in line for the biggest wealth transfer in history. It’s us, Gen X.
Over $124 trillion is set to change hands globally by 2048 - and we stand to inherit the greatest portion - $14 trillion in the next decade alone, according to Cerulli.
Meanwhile, the financial services industry is busy making TikToks for 24-year-olds. Nice one, Dave.
The Blind Spot
Three-quarters of UK cabinet ministers are Gen X. Four-fifths of FTSE 100 CEOs are too. The fastest-growing demographic on the very platform finance is currently throwing money at is… surprise, Gen X.
And yet, only 5% of influencer marketing budgets are pointed in their direction.
The same blind spot runs through beauty, wellness, arts, hospitality — any sector that’s quietly decided that the only story worth telling skews young. Gen X have been spending in those industries since the eighties. We’ve just stopped being the ones anyone is talking to.
Which brings us to the interesting bit. Gen X carries enormous spending power and real financial uncertainty in the same wallet - and has done for years.
Incoming Retirement Shock
We came of age after final salary pensions closed the door and before auto-enrolment bothered to knock, arriving too late for one and too early for the other - with nothing much in between.
We absorbed the 2008 crash, navigated a pandemic, then watched a Budget quietly rewrite the inheritance rules mid-game: pension death benefits pulled into estates for inheritance tax with almost no notice, the Pension Schemes Bill, salary sacrifice changes, a Pensions Commission revival and a relentless cycle of consultations and U-turns that would test anyone’s patience.
Controlling nearly a quarter of global spending, this is a generation more likely to be running your company than working for it — and less likely than both Boomers and Millennials to have a financial adviser:
_ Only 26% of Gen X use a financial adviser, against 43% of Boomers and 31% of Millennials
_ Nearly half have no retirement plan at all
_ 54% worry about outliving their assets
_ 21% are concerned money will prevent them from retiring entirely (source: Schroders)
Nearly half. With no retirement plan. Holy Shit.
The Black Rock 2024 UK Retirement Survey confirmed what most of us already know; this cohort is the most financially anxious of all generations and the most likely to describe itself as underprepared. In the generation currently running the room.
What Does Gen X Want?
Gen X wants products and services that actually speak to them uniquely. Instead, we’re getting Boomer backwash or cookie-cutter products wrapped up in Gen Z speak - think aspirational content built for people who’ve never heard of Black Monday let alone Black Grape.
Or even worse, campaigns that reflect midlife as either a crisis or a Caribbean cruise.
Only 13% of Gen X feel represented by the brands supposedly targeting them. Nobody’s talking to them properly. Which, depending on which side of that you’re on, is either a problem or the most obvious commercial opportunity in the room.
Trust, for this generation, isn’t something you can buy with a rebrand or a pivot to purpose. They’ve watched too many institutions promise one thing and quietly deliver another.
The End of Aspiration?
Publicis Luxe surveyed affluent Gen X consumers across four countries and landed on something that should be pinned above every marketing brief going; this is a generation with the means, the motivation and nothing to prove.
That last part is what keeps getting missed.
You don’t reach people with nothing to prove by telling them how aspirational your product is. You reach them by being worth their time. By getting the cultural register right. By knowing the difference between a brand that genuinely understands this cohort and one that’s just hired someone younger to ChatGPT it.
Get it wrong and we won't make a fuss. We'll just quietly take our money somewhere that actually gets us.
Get it right and you don't just win a customer. You win a generation that’s been waiting - with characteristic patience - for someone to finally clock it.
Want to know how your brand or business can tap into the Longer Life Economy? Let’s talk…
PS• The original man in finance. Some nostalgic joy from Thames Television, investigating The Yuppie. Also featuring - for reasons that remain unclear - Larry Hagman.
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