HSBC Private Bank and MIT Sloan School of Management have launched the Future Family Leaders Digital Programme, a six-week online course for heirs of the bank’s ultra-high-net-worth clients, aged 23 to 30. The first group starts on 3 November and finishes on 8 December 2026. Banks are courting heirs, but a course is only one of the tools families use to prepare them, and rarely the first. This post describes the course, then the methods families combine: talking early, giving heirs real roles in stages, writing rules down and, at some point, formal teaching.
What the HSBC and MIT Sloan course covers
According to the bank’s announcement, as reported by WealthBriefingAsia and Spear’s, the course has six modules over six weeks, with topics including family enterprise dynamics, the owner mindset, family unity, managing difficult conversations and developing a future pathway. The Brazilian outlet Let’s Money, summarising the same statement, says it mixes live and self-paced modules and is taught by the bank’s family governance specialists and MIT Sloan Executive Education faculty. No report gives a price, and we found no programme page on the HSBC or MIT Sloan websites.
It belongs to HSBC’s wider “Family Leaders” programme, whose annual forum in Athens in May 2026 drew more than 60 clients, WealthBriefingAsia reports. Ida Liu, chief executive of HSBC Private Bank, said clients want their children to gain experience “managing the demands before the transition, not after it.”
MIT Sloan is represented by John Davis, a senior lecturer in family enterprise. According to his firm, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, Davis founded and led the Families in Business programme at Harvard Business School from 1997 to 2017. A book he co-wrote from those classes calls preparation the “single most important determinant of a successful generational handoff.”
Why banks are teaching heirs
The sums explain the interest: a December 2024 report by Cerulli Associates on US high-net-worth markets, cited in coverage of the launch, put the wealth to be transferred through 2048 at $124 trillion: $105 trillion to heirs and $18 trillion to charity. Heirs are a private bank’s future clients, and a course is one way to know them early. A family should see the offer for what it is: education from a firm that hopes to keep the account.
A BNY study, as reported by Spear’s, found that nearly half of its US-based ultra-wealthy respondents thought their heirs were not ready to manage inherited wealth. In UBS’s 2025 survey, only 26% of family offices with a succession plan had involved the next generation from the start (see five common mistakes in managing family wealth). And only about a quarter of North American family offices have a documented succession plan, as we showed in the latest family office succession data.
Stages, not ages
One framework comes from The Williams Group, a family wealth consultancy, in a 2022 article published by RBC Wealth Management. Its author, Amy Castoro, argues that families should judge readiness by stage rather than by birthday. She lists six stages: awareness, baseline, engage, mature, lead and inherit.
Early on, the family simply talks, for example at a meeting that includes adult children and their spouses. Later, heirs take defined roles, such as a seat on the family investment committee or more responsibility for the family’s giving. In the lead stage, the founder moves from decision-maker to adviser. Some heirs may be ready at 18, when they manage a college budget, the article says; others only in their 30s, when they can focus on the family wealth.
Five tools families combine
Most families use several of these, roughly in this order.
- Family meetings and a family council. A family council is a group of relatives that meets on a fixed schedule to discuss shared matters, separate from the company’s board. Turkey’s Koç family has been described as having a family committee that meets on a fixed calendar and a written “Koç Constitution” (see how Koç Group keeps control at 100).
- Written rules on who may work in the business. A family employment policy says who may join the company, at what level and after what experience. Many families ask heirs to work elsewhere first. The advice is common, but a 2024 study by Joseph Astrachan, Isabel Botero and Carol Wittmeyer notes that no research had backed it. They interviewed 37 people at 11 large US family businesses, with and without such a rule.
- Observer seats and committees. An heir can attend a board or investment committee as a non-voting observer, learning how decisions are made before casting a vote.
- A real project with limited stakes. A foundation, a festival or a small venture lets an heir lead something visible without risking the core business, as with the first public roles of the Sawiris and Mansour heirs. In PwC’s 2019 survey of 956 next-generation members, only 48% had been asked to lead a change project, Family Business Magazine reported.
- Formal education. Courses like HSBC’s fit here. Spear’s notes that Coutts runs workshops for clients’ children, typically aged 21 to 35, and that Campden Wealth offers a six-module series that includes family communication and conflict management. Harvard Business School runs its own family enterprise programmes.
A fair caveat
The HSBC course is new, its price is not disclosed, and what we know comes from trade press summarising the bank’s statement. Readiness surveys are self-reported. Some popular numbers, such as the Williams Group article’s claim that a quarter of wealth transfers fail because heirs are not ready, come without a published method. And no tool works alone: a course without a real role rarely prepares anyone.
Five lessons to take away
- Start with conversations, not courses. Talking about assets and values comes before formal teaching.
- Judge readiness by stage, not age. An heir may be ready for a budget at 18 and for a family portfolio only years later.
- Give heirs real roles with limited downside. A committee seat or a foundation teaches more than a lecture.
- Write the rules down. An employment policy and a family council make expectations clear before they are tested.
- Treat bank programmes as one input. They help, but the provider also hopes to keep the heirs as clients.
Questions to bring to your advisors
What does each of our heirs know today about our assets, structures and plans? Which role could each one take next, and with what limits? Do we have written rules on who may work in the business or sit on its board? These are questions to bring to your advisors, not advice.
