Minted: A New Perspective on Wealth, Trust, and the Future of Luxury
Wealth is changing in who holds it, how it moves and what it takes to earn its confidence. Minted, a new white paper from REALM Global founder Julie Faupel, brings together global research and the voices of REALM members to explore who the new wealthy are and what they expect.
Wealth has always been made. What is changing is who holds it, how quickly it arrives, how freely it moves, and what it takes to earn the confidence of the people who hold it.
A founder becomes a principal in a single funding round. An heir inherits an estate along with a set of expectations the previous generation never held. A family once rooted in one city now keeps homes on three continents. Nearly one million new millionaires were created in 2025 alone, and Capgemini finds that 81% of next-generation inheritors plan to leave the wealth firms their parents relied on. Relationships that once passed from one generation to the next are now being chosen fresh.
For advisors, this is an evolution and an opening. The new wealthy choose the people around them through introduction, discretion and authority, and they tend to choose early. Understanding how that choice is made is the purpose of Minted: Who the New Wealthy Are, and What They Expect, a new white paper from REALM Global founder and CEO Julie Faupel, released this month.
“When wealth is created quickly, someone’s life can change faster than their trusted circle can form. They often have the capital before they have the counsel. When you consistently show up for them, you become more than an advisor — you become the person they trust for whatever comes next.”
Bridget Ramey
“When a client spends a few weeks in Auckland, a season in Marbella and the winter in Dubai, home becomes the people they trust in each of those places. That’s what we build for them.”
John Eric
A Perspective Shaped by the People Closest to Wealth
Minted draws on the leading research on global wealth, from UBS, Knight Frank, Capgemini, Cerulli, Bain & Company and REALM strategic partner Henley & Partners. What gives it its character is the community behind it: approximately 600 advisors across 23 countries, more than 40 U.S. states and 150+ brokerage brands, who sit across the table from this client every day and compare notes with one another when they do.
Some of the paper’s most valuable intelligence comes from those conversations. Bridget Ramey advises clients in Austin, one of the cities where new technology wealth tends to land first, and she has watched lives change faster than the support around them:
“When wealth is created quickly, someone’s life can change faster than their trusted circle can form. They often have the capital before they have the counsel. When you consistently show up for them, you become more than an advisor — you become the person they trust for whatever comes next.”
Capital before counsel. It is an observation that could only come from someone who has been in the room, and it runs through the whole paper.
On Cape Cod, Jack Cotton sees the same pattern from the other direction, in how these clients arrive in the first place:
“The next luxury client is often hiding in plain sight. They are the friend, relative or associate of someone who already owns in a luxury market. At this level, trust travels through relationships, and the most powerful introduction comes from someone the client already trusts saying, ‘You need to talk to this person.’ You don’t find these clients by becoming more visible. You find them by becoming more referable—and you become more referable by maintaining a client-first attitude in everything you do.”
Beyond the Traditional Definition of Luxury
Minted is less a set of findings than a way of seeing this client, and it rewards a curious reader.
It traces where new wealth comes from, and why a founder, an heir and an AI engineer arrive at the same decision for entirely different reasons. It follows that wealth across borders, where the paper’s phrase is that the new wealthy do not relocate, they assemble: residences, citizenships and properties gathered into a life designed for optionality. John Eric, Managing Partner of TLCGA and TLCUK, describes what that asks of the people who serve them:
“When a client spends a few weeks in Auckland, a season in Marbella and the winter in Dubai, home becomes the people they trust in each of those places. That’s what we build for them.”
The paper also explores why luxury itself is being redefined, as ownership gives way to experience, status to meaning and possession to belonging, with implications for branded residences, wellness, art, yachting and private aviation.
Its most intriguing idea may be about hesitation. For this client, Minted suggests, desire is not the constraint. Permission is. They do not ask whether they can buy. They ask whether they should. What answers that question, and who is trusted to help answer it, is where the paper spends some of its most thoughtful pages, and where it introduces the advisor this generation is looking for: a figure REALM calls the Trusted.
The Future of Trusted Advisory
The thread that ties Minted together is an encouraging one. The opportunity to build trust often begins long before a real estate transaction is considered, in relationships with the people and professionals who meet new wealth first, and it continues long after, as clients move between markets and wealth moves between generations. Advisors who invest in those relationships become part of how a family makes its most important decisions.
Minted is also the opening chapter of a larger conversation. That conversation continues at the REALM Global Collective 2027, where senior advisors and the capital gatekeepers who counsel the wealthy will come together to explore what this evolution means for the future of advisory, and to shape a shared standard for serving each generation of wealth. The Collective convenes May 17–19, 2027, at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin.
As Faupel writes, “This paper defines the client. The work that follows will define the standard.”
For anyone who serves this client, or hopes to, Minted is an invitation into that work: a perspective shaped by the people closest to wealth, and a starting point for what comes next.
