Global Family Office Report 2025 Reveals a Sector Under Strategic Pressure

Seventy-three percent of family offices globally plan to increase their allocations to alternative assets over the next two years, according to Ocorian's 2025 Global Family Office Report — a finding that signals not incremental adjustment but a structural reorientation of how private wealth is deployed. The report, which draws on responses from senior decision-makers across single-family offices (SFOs) and multi-family offices (MFOs) managing assets ranging from US$250 million to over US$5 billion, offers granular snapshots of institutional family office behaviour published this year. For principals operating across Asia-Pacific, the data lands at a moment when Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai are all actively competing for domicile mandates, and where regulatory frameworks from MAS to the SFC are evolving fast enough to reward those who act on intelligence early.

The reason this matters personally to any principal reading this is straightforward: the decisions being made right now — on structure, allocation, succession, and governance — will determine whether a family office remains fit for purpose through the next decade of compounding. The 2025 data makes clear that the offices pulling ahead are not necessarily the largest, but the most deliberately governed. Understanding where global peers are moving, and why, is not a benchmarking exercise — it is a strategic input.

Alternatives Allocation: How Far Is the Shift Going?

The headline figure of 73% planning to increase alternatives exposure is striking, but the composition of that shift is where the analysis becomes actionable. Private equity remains the dominant alternative category, cited by 61% of respondents as a priority allocation target, followed by private credit at 48% and real assets — including infrastructure and timberland — at 39%. Hedge funds, by contrast, are being trimmed by 22% of offices, suggesting a clear preference for illiquid, return-generating structures over liquid alternatives with higher fee drag. This reallocation away from hedge funds and toward private credit mirrors the broader institutional trend, but family offices are moving faster because they are unconstrained by the liability-matching requirements that slow pension funds.

For Asia-Pacific principals, the private credit opportunity is particularly acute. Regional private credit markets remain underpenetrated relative to North America and Europe, and family offices with long-dated capital and a tolerance for complexity are well-positioned to capture the illiquidity premium. The report notes that 34% of family offices are now co-investing directly alongside general partners rather than solely through fund structures — a trend that reduces fee load and increases information advantage, but demands more rigorous due diligence infrastructure internally.

"Thirty-four percent of family offices are now co-investing directly alongside GPs — reducing fee drag while demanding significantly more internal due diligence capability." — Ocorian 2025 Global Family Office Report

Governance and Succession: The Structural Fault Lines

Despite the sophistication evident in allocation strategy, the 2025 report exposes a persistent governance deficit. Only 41% of family offices surveyed have a formally documented succession plan in place, and of those, fewer than half have stress-tested the plan against a sudden incapacitation scenario. This is not a new finding — successive annual surveys have flagged the same gap — but the urgency is sharpening as the first wave of Asian wealth creators, many of whom built their fortunes between 1985 and 2005, approaches the transition window. The gap between investment sophistication and governance maturity remains the single most consequential structural risk for the sector.

The report identifies three distinct governance failure modes: founder dependency (where decision-making authority is too concentrated), documentation gaps (where investment policy statements and family constitutions exist in draft form but have never been ratified), and next-generation disengagement (where G2 and G3 family members are aware of the office's existence but not its strategy or values). Each of these failure modes is addressable, but all require deliberate intervention rather than organic resolution. Singapore's MAS has been explicit in its guidance to Variable Capital Company (VCC) licensees that governance documentation is a supervisory expectation, not merely best practice — a signal that regulatory patience for informal arrangements is narrowing.

Regulatory Arbitrage and Jurisdiction Strategy in Asia-Pacific

The 2025 report dedicates significant attention to domicile strategy, and the Asia-Pacific findings are particularly relevant for this readership. Singapore continues to attract the largest share of new family office registrations in the region, with MAS reporting that the number of family offices managing assets under the Section 13O and 13U incentive schemes exceeded 1,100 by end-2024 — a figure that has more than tripled in four years. The VCC structure, introduced in 2020, has become the vehicle of choice for multi-strategy family offices seeking fund-level segregation with Singapore's treaty network and substance requirements. MAS's 2023 tightening of the 13U threshold to a minimum AUM of S$50 million at point of application, with a commitment to grow to S$200 million within two years, has effectively filtered out smaller applicants and raised the quality bar for the.

Hong Kong is responding with its own competitive positioning. The Open-ended Fund Company (OFC) structure, administered under SFC oversight, offers comparable flexibility to the VCC and has seen accelerating uptake since the SFC streamlined its approval process in 2022. The SFC's family office-specific policy statement, published in 2023, signalled a clear intent to position Hong Kong as a credible alternative to Singapore for ultra-high-net-worth principals with strong Greater China connectivity. Dubai's DIFC, meanwhile, is capturing a growing share of Middle Eastern and South Asian family office mandates, with the DIFC Family Wealth Centre providing bespoke structuring support and a regulatory sandbox that allows innovative trust and foundation structures unavailable in either Singapore or Hong Kong. For principals with assets, beneficiaries, or operating businesses across multiple jurisdictions, the question is no longer which single domicile to choose but how to construct a multi-node structure that optimises for tax efficiency, regulatory credibility, and operational resilience simultaneously.

Talent, Technology, and the Operating Model Under Pressure

Sixty-seven percent of family offices in the Ocorian survey report difficulty recruiting qualified investment professionals, and 54% cite technology infrastructure as a material operational constraint. These are not peripheral concerns — they directly affect the ability to execute on the allocation ambitions described earlier. A family office that wants to co-invest in private credit but lacks the legal, compliance, and analytical to conduct independent due diligence is not actually able to capture the opportunity; it is merely exposed to the risk of being a passive capital provider without the information advantage that justifies the illiquidity premium. The talent constraint is most acute at the mid-level — analysts and associates with three to seven years of experience who understand both institutional investment process and the discretion required in a principal environment.

Technology investment is accelerating in response. The report finds that 58% of family offices are actively evaluating or implementing consolidated reporting platforms that aggregate across custodians, asset classes, and currencies — a basic capability that, remarkably, remains absent in a significant minority of offices. A smaller but growing cohort, approximately 29%, are piloting AI-assisted portfolio monitoring tools, though the report is careful to note that adoption is at an early stage and that data governance concerns — particularly around privacy and cross-border data transfer — remain a significant implementation barrier in regulated jurisdictions like Singapore and Hong Kong.

Key Strategic Takeaways for Family Office Principals

1. Review alternatives allocation targets against internal capability: The 73% planning to increase alternatives exposure should prompt an honest assessment of whether your office has the due diligence infrastructure to execute — particularly for direct co-investments in private credit and private equity.
2. Audit governance documentation before the regulator does: MAS and SFC are both moving toward more active supervision of family office governance. An investment policy statement, family constitution, and succession plan that are ratified — not merely drafted — are now table stakes.
3. Evaluate VCC and OFC structures on their merits: Singapore's VCC and Hong Kong's OFC each offer genuine advantages depending on your beneficiary profile, asset mix, and treaty requirements. The decision should be driven by structural fit, not jurisdictional loyalty.
4. Address the mid-level talent gap proactively: Waiting for the right hire to appear organically is not a strategy. Consider structured secondment arrangements with institutional managers or specialist family office recruiters with regional networks.
5. Benchmark technology infrastructure against peer offices: If your office cannot produce a consolidated NAV across all asset classes within 48 hours, that is a governance risk as much as an operational one.
6. Engage next-generation family members in governance, not just investment: The report's finding that G2 and G3 disengagement is a primary succession risk is a call to action for principals who have deferred this conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Ocorian 2025 Global Family Office Report cover?

The Ocorian 2025 Global Family Office Report surveys senior decision-makers at single-family offices and multi-family offices globally, covering allocation strategy, governance, succession planning, regulatory trends, talent, and technology. It provides quantitative benchmarks across offices ranging from US$250 million to over US$5 billion in AUM, making it one of the more comprehensive primary research documents available to the sector this year.

How does Singapore's MAS regulate family offices under the 13U scheme?

MAS administers the Section 13U tax incentive scheme for family offices that meet a minimum AUM threshold of S$50 million at application, with a commitment to reach S$200 million within two years. Applicants must demonstrate substantive operations in Singapore, including qualified investment professionals and a defined investment mandate. The VCC structure is frequently used alongside 13U to provide fund-level segregation and access to Singapore's double tax agreement network.

What is the difference between Singapore's VCC and Hong Kong's OFC for family offices?

Both the Variable Capital Company (VCC) in Singapore and the Open-ended Fund Company (OFC) in Hong Kong are fund structures designed to accommodate multi-strategy investment mandates with sub-fund segregation. The VCC benefits from Singapore's extensive tax treaty network and MAS's established supervisory framework. The OFC, regulated by the SFC, is better suited for families with significant Greater China exposure and beneficiaries who require Hong Kong's legal infrastructure. The choice between them should be driven by beneficiary location, asset composition, and operational substance requirements.

Why is succession planning still so underdeveloped in family offices despite years of attention?

The Ocorian report finds that only 41% of family offices have a formally documented succession plan, a figure that has improved only marginally over several years of industry focus on the issue. The primary barriers are founder reluctance to formalise the transition of authority, the emotional complexity of multi-generational family dynamics, and a tendency to treat succession as a future project rather than a current governance requirement. Regulators including MAS are beginning to treat succession documentation as a supervisory expectation, which may accelerate adoption.

What to Watch: Forward-Looking Signals for 2025–2026

Several developments warrant close monitoring by Asia-Pacific principals over the next 12 to 18 months. MAS is expected to publish updated guidance on family office governance standards, potentially including minimum requirements for investment policy documentation and independent oversight. The SFC's ongoing review of the OFC regime may introduce new sub-fund structures that increase its competitiveness with the VCC. In Dubai, the DIFC Family Wealth Centre is expected to expand its suite of foundation structures, which could attract additional South Asian and Southeast Asian principals seeking a neutral third-country domicile. The competitive dynamic between Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai for family office mandates will intensify in 2025, and principals who have not reviewed their domicile strategy in the past 18 months should do so before year-end. The Ocorian 2025 report is a useful starting point for that review — not because it provides answers specific to your situation, but because it establishes the benchmark against which your current structure should be measured.

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