While successful business owners are confident their businesses will survive once they retire, they have less confidence in their personal wealth strategies, according to a new survey from Merrill Lynch.

Only around a third of business owners – of firms with revenue of between $10 and $250 million – think their personal wealth strategy would meet all their financial and life goals were they to stop running their business today.

What’s more, a majority of these business owners do not work with a management consultant, personal financial advisor or commercial banker on developing a succession plan - with only 39 per cent saying they do. Likewise, many business owners (33 per cent) have not worked with a personal financial advisor and/or commercial banker to arrange their personal finances for the day they are no longer running a business. Both these statistics imply there are plenty of untapped opportunities out there for the wealth management industry.

Firms which focus on building links with entrepreneurs often go outside the usual “centers of influence” to develop relationships, Justin Fulton, principal and client strategist at the multi-family office Signature, told Family Wealth Report earlier this year.

“We have always networked with typical centers of influence such as estate planning attorneys and accountants, but our focus on first generation wealth leads us to spend time with other centers of influence dealing with that group such as investment bankers and private equity firms,” he said.

When it comes to business succession, most business owners said they would trust a current employee to take over (51 per cent), followed by a family member (24 per cent) and an external person (21 per cent).

Despite the difficult economic climate many business owners are focused on growth, the survey found, something which could distract them even further from managing their personal finances.