PNC survey: 89% of owners want combined advice, 55% have it

PNC Private Bank's Business Owner Wealth Insights 2026, fielded by Ipsos online from Nov. 19 to Dec. 10, 2025 among 300 owners of companies generating $10 million to $125 million in annual revenue, puts a number on the integrated-advice pitch. 89% of owners say they value advice that treats the business and the personal balance sheet as one plan, while 55% actually work with an advisor on both. InvestmentNews reported the results, and Don Heberle, who heads PNC Private Bank, said the research shows owners seeking holistic advice that joins personal finances and business goals.

The asset itself keeps that gap open. Owners typically hold most of their net worth in a single illiquid position, and Rick Simonetti, founding partner, CEO and head of wealth planning at Fidelis Capital, told InvestmentNews that the hardest step is getting an owner to move money out of the company at all. The business is usually both the owner's pride and the highest-growth asset on the page, so cash diverted into an outside portfolio runs into resistance that no spreadsheet answers. His approach is procedural: start early and small so the drag on the company stays modest, set a finite target for the outside portfolio rather than an open-ended one, and hold real estate in entities separate from the operating business from the outset, which buys flexibility ahead of an exit or an unforeseen event.

Andrew Schiff, CEO of TritonPoint Wealth, treats a private owner's equity as the client's alternatives allocation, reasoning that the business already supplies illiquid, low-correlation exposure, so layering private equity or venture capital on top buys little and piles more of the same risk onto the owner. He steers investable assets toward public markets, stocks or bonds, sized so the client keeps enough liquidity for normal and emergency needs outside the company.

The discipline numbers are less flattering: of the 98% of owners who said they reassess business decisions against their personal goals, about 40% do so only occasionally or rarely, and 31% have no succession plan in place. PWD has covered owners moving exits forward on pandemic memory, but the readiness shortfall sits behind that urgency rather than ahead of it, and InvestmentNews has also reported that most potential business successors assume a plan already exists when owners say it does not.

The 55% rests on entity separation, a funded outside portfolio, insurance against the owner's death or incapacity, and a plan that gets revisited rather than filed. That work runs through tax, legal and estate disciplines most advisory firms staff thinly or refer out, which is why a shortfall this old keeps showing up in surveys. The gap makes a fine prospecting list; closing it will take firms that can execute the entity, liquidity and estate work rather than describe it. The 55% is the figure to watch in PNC's next edition.