With a population of 122 million, Japan is the fourth largest economy in the world. It’s also home to the fourth largest population of UHNWIs worldwide - over 22,000 UHNWIs that hold combined wealth of over $2 trillion.

Yet there’s almost no tangible family office industry.

Family offices with a public presence are rare: Yamauchi No.10 from the Nintendo founding family is the most renowned, if mostly for their quirky website, and there’s also MA Platform, from the founder of Mori Trust Group. 

Curious after a recent trip to Japan, we reached out to family office professionals and companies to ascertain what ecosystem was in place.

One single family office head in Tokyo summed it bluntly: “There is no ecosystem here.” 

Like other major jurisdictions with minimal structures in place, the big multinational consulting firms are prominent, and there is growth in private wealth managers offering family office services, like PrivateBank and Monolith RIA. 

For such a wealthy country, it’s confounding, yet an accurate reflection of the cultural differences that make Japan so unique - something anyone quickly learns when they visit.

Flaunting wealth isn’t a consideration, even for the most public of billionaires. An example is Masayoshi Son, who despite being the wealthiest man in Japan still went through multiple efforts to hide his involvement in the purchase and costly development of his Tokyo mansion. (Side note: we’ve recommended the book Gambling Man before, a good summer read)

Discretion and privacy, standard family office practices globally, are just part of the national psyche in Japan. Almost everyone we spoke to that worked directly with wealthy Japanese families politely refused to comment on record. 

More than just privacy

Another element in Japan is long-term dedication: how individuals that acquire wealth have usually devoted themselves to a single company from the start of their career.

One investment professional who’s spent over 30 years working for or with Japanese companies shared some insight on this. Anonymously, of course.

“One of many cliches of Japan in the West that is rooted in reality is the Japanese tendency to identify with the group. As it pertains to Japanese families at one level, it means that financially successful Japanese usually start their career with one company and almost always stay with that company until retirement.” 

He shared something repeated by several sources, how employees - even management - are often generalists, hired for attributes and rarely for experience.

“Individuals are expected to dedicate themselves to the company and to master any role required of them in a short time.” 

Loyalty isn’t just between employees and companies. Most long-established companies are connected to the three large trust banks (SuMiTrust, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust, Mizuho Trust) that control over 95% of the market. There is also extreme loyalty here too.

“Changing banks is about as likely as a Japanese individual quitting a company: it happens but it is rare.”

When it comes to dedicated entities to manage family wealth, he noted most operate within a family operating business, not as separate entities, though many will have a single representative working from an office in Tokyo or in the US to explore opportunities. 

This structure was echoed by Gabriel Colominas who manages the Japan Deep Value Fund at GESIURIS. 

“Family-office functions exist but are fragmented - the family may have an asset-holding company, a tax accountant, a trust bank and someone inside the operating company managing personal matters, but not a institutionalize family office.”

He adds that: “Japan has been very good at preserving companies across generations, but not at managing the family separately from the company.”

Tokyo is home to over 290,000 resident USD millionaires.

Kasan 家産

Colominas also highlighted the concept of kasan, which he says means something close to family patrimony, but also relates to how in Japan, the company comes first. 

“The idea is that the company and the family assets belong to the family across generations, not only to the person currently controlling them. The current chairman has the responsibility to preserve them and pass them to the next generation.”

“In the Western family-office model, the company is an asset owned by the family. Under the kasan idea, the family is more like the temporary custodian of the company.”

Such a culture creates some unusual situations, and he’s personally been privy to some odd activity.

“I have seen retiring chairmen sell their shares back to the company at a discount, even when the shares were already extremely cheap.

“From a financial point of view, it makes no sense. But their view is that they are retiring and are no longer entitled to keep the shares connected to their position. They see themselves more as temporary custodians of the company than as owners free to maximize their personal wealth.”

Activity like this or the handover of large shareholdings to foundations, which he also sees, is what he says “can create very long-term companies, but it can also lead to poor capital allocation, excess cash and too little focus on outside shareholders.”

Welcome to taxation station

Japan is also a hard place to build lasting family wealth because of tax. Inheritance tax tops out at 55%, so there is no incentive to remove this wealth from an operating company.

As Colominas notes, holding companies don’t solve this either: “Creating a family office does not eliminate inheritance tax. If you transfer the assets to a family holding company, the heirs inherit the shares of that company, which are still taxable at rates that could reach 55%.” 

Add to this a top income tax of near 55% and you've got a system designed to shrink fortunes, not preserve them.

There also no easy way out. Since 2015, anyone leaving with significant wealth faces an "exit tax" of roughly 20%. And a Japanese national can't just relocate to avoid this, since these rules can follow them and their heirs for up to a decade after they've gone.

A lack of successors

Another point of interest when it comes to Japan is that 62% of Japanese companies have no succession plan in place. 

Surely something that a more structured family office approach could solve? 

“For some larger family businesses, absolutely,” says Colominas. “A family office could separate ownership from management, prepare the next generation as shareholders, appoint a professional CEO and organize inheritance and voting rights.”

“But it would not solve the whole problem. Many of these companies are very small, and the main issue is that the children do not want to run the business, the founder has not built a management team, or the company is in a declining industry or region.”

Ultimately, Japan is a unique country with its own approach to managing wealth, one that doesn’t fit the narrative we’re used to in the West. 

It will be interesting to see though how the next generation of Japanese combined with the influence of increasing foreign investment affects the current family wealth ecosystem - or lack of it.

Don’t expect Japan to be competing as a regional family office hub with Singapore or Hong Kong anytime soon though.

What to read

The Toyota Way by Jeffrey K. Liker is a classic on Japanese business culture. Toyota’s obsession with long-term thinking, continuous improvement and stewardship over quick wins feels very kasan (家産).

What to listen to

In this fascinating episide of Founders, Raymond Plank explains how he turned $250,000 into oil giant Apache Corporation, worth $50 billion 50 years later. The episode draws lessons from his memoir A Small Difference on opportunity, courage, frugality, resourcefulness and adapting over a lifetime in business.

A brutal week for the world’s richest A wave of family offices arrives in Miami Moving from an income world to a wealth world Setting up a family office after a liquidity event Living Large: The single-engine turbo prop loved by billionaires

More on Mamdani’s Pied-À-Terre home tax.

A wave of family offices arrives in Miami.

‘Wealth Attracts Wealth’: A Wave of Family Offices Arrives in Miami

The real story here isn't the real estate, it's what's driving it: family offices have stopped being investment vehicles and become full operating infrastructure - governance, tax, next-gen planning, the works..

“Investment discussions rarely stay focused on investments for very long.”

One of the things I love most about this industry is that every report tells two stories. There’s the story in the data…And there’s the story behind the data.

After more than a decade listening to Family Offices, I’ve learned the second story is usually the more interesting one. The latest UBS Global Family Office Report is a great example.
One statistic immediately caught my attention.
7 out of 10 Family Offices expect to make strategic changes to their portfolios over the next 5 years. Most people will interpret that as an investment story. I see something a little different…

How the family office landscape is evolving.

Family Office Landscape Evolving with Transparency and Professionalization

Greater transparency. More professionalization. A rising generation of decision-makers. And an increasing recognition that access alone isn’t enough. The right relationships still matter…

Living Large: the finer things in life

The Swiss-built single-engine turbo prop loved by Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg and former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has a two-year waiting list for good reason: not only can it fly at 330mph above the weather for over 2,000 miles, but it can land almost anywhere, cutting hours from journeys - Spear’s

“To get rich, stand next to the largest pile of money you can find.”

The quote, often attributed to Charlie Munger, powerfully captures the opportunities created by the Great Wealth Transfer.

Cerulli estimates that $85 trillion will change hands by 2045. Roughly $73 trillion goes to heirs. Around $12 trillion goes to charity. And 42% of it flows from just 1.5% of households.

So who benefits?

The heirs, obviously. The primary beneficiaries of the fortunes.

But look one layer out. The wealth managers. The service providers. The family offices, the private banks, the funds, the advisors, the lawyers, the charities, the tech firms,. the startups. The secondary beneficiaries. That's where incredible opportunities sit.

Family offices will make a seismic mark over the next two decades, as transformative as the arrival of the public company or the rise of private equity.

These are exhilarating times, especially for anyone putting themselves in the right place at the right time.

Today, we are taking a look at 25 opportunities that are hiding in plain sight.

Whether you're starting a business, selecting a career, or placing capital, this is where the next decade gets made.

1. Next-Gen Wealth Education

You can't inherit judgment. Platforms teaching heirs about investing, governance and responsibility are filling a real gap. Tamarind Learning's Torri Hawley puts it plainly: education isn't a luxury, it's essential.

There’s a growing wealth education ecosystem. Curriculum designers, retreat hosts, certification bodies, the family office consultants who win mandates purely because they can teach. Some Delaware trusts only release information to heirs once they hit education milestones. Learning can be a gatekeeper for capital. 

Build the content, the assessment, the software that tracks it, and families will pay to plug it straight into their governance.

2. Succession Planning

Only 47% of family offices have a succession plan (UBS). That's a time bomb. Advisors who can structure estates and tax cleanly will see demand explode.

And there’s knock-on work. Life insurance written to fund estate tax and create liquidity. Valuation specialists pricing the operating business. Bridge managers holding the reins between generations. The software firms turning a bespoke, painful process into a repeatable product.

Whoever packages succession into something a family can actually buy off the shelf owns a market that renews every generation.

3. Wealth Psychology

Inheritance is messy and human. Coaches and therapists helping heirs deal with guilt, identity and family friction are carving out a genuine niche. One advisor told us succession is a psychological problem being solved with legal tools. There are better ways.

So build the better ways. Facilitators who run the hard family meetings. Training programs that certify a new class of wealth-fluent therapists, because there aren't enough. The advisory firms that fold this into their offering and suddenly look very different from the shop down the road pushing product. Soft skills, hard demand.

“I have yet to meet a family that has truly never considered their succession plans, but I have worked with many who have never talked about it together, developed a plan, and have a timeline.” - Dr. Charles Eckhart, Cathexis Group

4. Philanthropy Platforms

The ultra-wealthy gave $190 billion in 2022 (Altrata). Over 200 people have signed the Giving Pledge. Donor-advised funds, giving circles and new philanthropic tech are multiplying for a generation that wants impact, not a plaque on a wall.

$12 trillion is heading to charity in this transfer, and all of it needs plumbing. DAF sponsors take a cut of assets under administration. Impact measurement tools sell certainty to donors who want proof. Grant admin software, foundation back-office, next-gen giving advisors. Even the charities themselves become clients, hiring people who can speak the language of wealth. Money that gives itself away still pays everyone who helps it move.

5. Private Market Access

Millennial heirs want venture and private equity. Platforms opening access to what used to sit behind institutional walls are well placed. Family offices already run around 44% of portfolios in alternatives.

The access layer is only the front door. Behind it sit feeder funds and funds-of-funds bundling smaller checks, the data providers finally bringing transparency to private markets, the fund admins and the placement agents. Tokenization drops minimums and widens the buyer pool again. Every time you lower the barrier to a private deal, you create a business out of the machinery that makes it possible.

6. Direct Deals

Families want co-investments, not just fund exposure. Citi reports 80% of family offices now do direct deals, and 69% of those are club deals alongside other families (PwC). Syndicate platforms and deal clubs are the plumbing.

Now count who gets paid around each deal. Sourcing platforms that surface flow. Due diligence sold as a service to families without an in-house team. The lawyers papering the SPVs, the admins running them, the fractional CIOs who build and run a direct program for a fee.

7. ESG & Impact Funds

Values-based strategies pull outsized flows from younger inheritors. Risk appetite here stays low, so the winners will be managers who prove returns, not just intentions.

After years of greenwashing noise, the demand now runs toward verification, measurement and honest reporting, and that's a business in itself. Ratings firms, impact data providers, the advisors who can separate real returns from marketing. Serve the heir who wants both a clear conscience and a clear track record, and you'll out-earn everyone still selling vibes.

8. Longevity & HealthTech

Heirs want to live longer and better. US concierge medicine is already worth over $21 billion, with memberships running at tens of thousands of dollars a year. Biotech, diagnostics and wellness clinics ride the same wave.

Concierge medical providers already partner with MFOs, and Dr. Gregory Charlop framed the logic well: why choose a family office that manages your money when one can look after you as a whole person? That makes health a client-winning differentiator, rather than just a product. Diagnostics, wearables, longevity clinics, and the coordinator role inside the office all feed off the same demand.

“Wellness and longevity services for UHNWIs are undergoing a radical transformation. Between new technology, customized solutions, and integrative care, wealthy individuals can expect to enjoy longer, richer lives.” - Dr. Gregory Charlop

9. Digital Assets

26% of family offices held crypto in 2023, up from 16% two years earlier (Goldman). Allocations stay small. But custody, reporting and tax solutions are a real business underneath the volatility.

And there’s money in the picks and shovels. Institutional-grade custody, tax and reporting built for family offices, compliance tooling, estate planning (what happens to private keys when the holder dies). The families most exposed are recent tech-exit fortunes who understand the tech but not the wrapper around it. Be the trusted partner that lets a family hold digital assets without losing sleep, and the volatility becomes someone else's problem.

10. Family Governance

New voices at the table need new rules. Only 44% of family offices have a governance framework (UBS). Advisors who write family constitutions and build councils that actually function will stay busy.

Governance-as-a-service is wide open. Constitution drafters, council facilitators, the software that runs family meetings and votes, the training that turns a nervous heir into a functioning board member. Most of this is done badly or not at all. Sell structure to families drowning in informality and you sell them something they'll keep paying for across generations.

11. Inter-Generational Mediation

More heirs, more branches, more disputes. Mediators trained specifically in family wealth conflict will become essential hires, not a last resort when it's already gone wrong.

Prevention pays even better than the cure. Law firms are building dedicated dispute-resolution practices. And smart money sits upstream: structuring ownership and decision rights so the fight never starts. Certification programs to train mediators. The standing ombudsman role inside larger offices. Conflict is almost guaranteed when wealth splits across a growing family, so anyone who can defuse it (or design it out) stands to do well. 

12. Luxury Real Estate

Family offices hold around 10% in property (UBS), and around 44% plan to increase their allocation to commercial property, while 25% are considering further residential investment. (Knight Frank). Younger heirs lean toward global lifestyle homes over the old family pile.

That reshuffle spells opportunity. Prime urban condos, villas and resort residences change hands as tastes shift, and the brokers, developers and buying agents who understand next-gen preferences win the mandates. Add the advisors structuring cross-border ownership, the managers running the properties day to day, and the platforms fractionalizing trophy assets. A generation trading the estate for a portfolio of homes needs people to build, place and run all of it.

“Many family offices are targeting value‑add and operational real estate, behaving more like institutional investors than passive capital.” - Liam Bailey, Global Head of Research at Knight Frank

13. Art & Collectibles

The world's wealthiest already hold over $2 trillion in art and collectibles. Tastes keep shifting, from contemporary to digital, and the advisors, dealers and platforms who follow the money will do well.

A $2 trillion asset class runs on a hidden services industry. Provenance and authentication, now moving onto blockchain. Art lending against a collection to free up cash. Fractional ownership platforms, specialist storage, insurance, logistics, and the quiet work of cataloguing a family's holdings so they can actually be managed. As collections pass down and get valued, taxed and rebalanced, every one of those functions turns into a fee.

14. Wealth Content

Schools are almost universally useless at teaching practical financial education. Podcasts, newsletters and creators who explain investing to inheritors are thriving. 

Attention is the new oil.

And attention converts. Content can be the top of a funnel that runs into paid communities, sponsorship, educational programs and eventually advisory relationships and deal flow. The creators who build trust with the next generation become the people those heirs call first when real money is in play. Media brand today, distribution moat tomorrow. 

15. Women of Wealth

Much of this money passes horizontally first. Spouses, often women, inherit before it reaches the next generation. Female-led networks, platforms and advisory firms are built for that reality.

Many widows fire the family's existing advisor after they inherit. That's a retention crisis for incumbents and an open goal for everyone else. Advisory firms designed around how women actually approach wealth, the networks and communities that build loyalty early, the products that speak to a client the industry has talked past for decades. Whoever holds the relationship through the horizontal transfer holds the cards.

16. FinTech for Trusts

Trust reporting, distributions and beneficiary access still run on antiquated systems. Founders building the iPhone-grade version of this will find a hungry market.

And the gaps in the market are there. The integrations that slot into an office's existing tech stack. The beneficiary-facing apps that finally make a trust legible to the people inside it. And the incumbent trust companies who can't build this themselves and will pay to acquire whoever does. Solve a genuinely tedious problem for a wealthy, sticky client base, then sell into the establishment or get bought by it.

17. Private Banking 2.0

Challenger banks and tech-first platforms built for family offices and UHNW heirs will peel clients off the incumbents. Plenty of families already leave private banks for MFOs to escape conflicts and murky fees.

Every client that walks out of a private bank is revenue up for grabs. The MFOs absorbing the outflow. The tech vendors powering the challengers. Embedded lending and liquidity products aimed at families who want their bank to actually understand their balance sheet. Even the advisors who simply design a family's banking architecture across providers. Trust in the old model is thin, and thin trust is where new entrants thrive.

18. Concierge Services

Next-gen wealth is lifestyle-driven. Travel, security, education and staffing wrapped into premium concierge models.

The opportunity splits two ways. Specialist providers, the security firms, private staffing agencies, travel curators who serve this market directly. And the aggregators who bundle it all into one relationship. For MFOs, concierge becomes the value-add that wins and keeps clients in a crowded market. Lifestyle is where the emotional loyalty lives, and loyalty is what stops a family shopping their advisor around.

19. Secondary Markets

Secondaries hit over $240 billion in transactions last year, and 28% of family offices plan to increase their allocation (JP Morgan). As heirs rebalance illiquid portfolios, liquidity becomes a prize.

Liquidity is a serious business. The brokers and intermediaries matching buyers to sellers. The pricing and data platforms bringing daylight to an opaque corner. The funds built to buy secondaries, and the lenders like Nodem writing loans against private portfolios so families raise cash without selling. As a whole generation inherits illiquid positions it wants to reshape, whoever provides the exit gets paid at both ends.

“The best secondary opportunities in late-stage private tech move in a few days. They never become a formal process - they flow through relationships built over years, directly with founders, GPs, and early shareholders who need discretion above everything else.” - Diane Dupré, Clifton Partners

20. Family Businesses Succession

86% of family offices still sit behind an active operating business (PwC). Advisors who can manage generational handovers of those companies will have decades of work ahead of them.

The handover itself is one fee. The ecosystem around it is many. M&A advisors when the family decides to sell rather than pass down. The search funds and entrepreneurs-through-acquisition raising capital specifically to buy these businesses. Interim management, ESOP and employee-ownership structurers, the lenders financing buyouts. With most family offices tied to a live operating company, there’s a decades-long pipeline of transactions.

21. Sports & Entertainment Ownership

Younger heirs and billionaires eye teams, leagues, esports and media franchises as trophy assets with upside. Expect more family capital chasing sports ventures.

Franchise valuations keep climbing, and the pool of buyers who can write those checks is widening as wealth passes down. That pulls in a whole supply chain: the advisors sourcing and vetting deals, the funds building minority-stake vehicles for families who want in without running the club, the lawyers handling league approval, the operators turning a trophy into a business. Media rights, merchandising, real estate around the venue, all of it compounds. For anyone who can bridge serious capital and the sports and entertainment world, the next decade is wide open.

22. Climate Investment

From regenerative agriculture to carbon tech, climate is a generational calling card. Younger inheritors treat it as strategy, not charity.

Climate-focused fund managers, carbon measurement and verification, project developers who turn capital into working assets, the diligence layer that tells a good deal from a green one. Advisors who can source and vet this flow for families are scarce and getting scarcer relative to demand. A generation that wants its portfolio to mean something will pay well for people who can deliver both the meaning and the return.

23. Education Tech

The next generation cares about education, and they invest in what they care about. So family capital is flowing into edtech that matches their values: wider access, personalized learning, global reach.

There's a symmetry here. The same heirs being taught how to handle wealth also want to fund how everyone else learns. That turns edtech into a favorite investment theme, and the money spreads across the whole chain. The founders building the tools. The funds deploying into them. The platforms handling distribution and credentialing. When capital chases a sector its backers personally believe in, it moves fast, and whoever gets in early on the right names rides the whole climb.

24. Luxury Brands

Spending is tilting toward experience, but trophy assets will always be trophy assets.

Follow where the ownership goes. Private equity and family capital are buying heritage houses outright, while emerging designers hunt for the patient backers heirs are well placed to be. Experiential luxury, the travel, hospitality and membership clubs are booming. And when those assets are resold, authentication is often necessary. A generation that spends differently reshapes the entire chain, and every link is investable.

25. Advisor Consolidation

Expect roll-ups of RIAs, multi-family offices and boutiques racing to serve this wave at scale. The land grab is on.

The PE firms funding the roll-ups. The M&A advisors brokering RIA and MFO deals and taking a slice of each. The platforms selling scale to the acquirers: shared tech, compliance, back office. And the individual advisor who can either sell their book into a consolidator at a premium or lead one. When an industry reorganizes this fast, the people organizing it capture the most value of all.

Beyond money, this transfer shifts priorities

Boomers built, but as the next generation of Millennials and Gen Z take over, they will rebuild in their own image.

Every trend is really a signal: read the signal, find the gap, put yourself in front of it.

_

The asset manager / wealth adviser flywheel Influencer Jake Paul launches family office Bernard Arnault denies succession rift The AI sceptic's guide to AI in the family office What CFOs should know about family offices Living Large: The 50 greatest luxury hotels on earth

How to stay grounded.

Let’s not overdo it, shall we?

Suddenly, It’s a ‘Family Office’ World

The 'family office' label is expanding because the need behind it is real. The ecosystem model this piece describes - a network of specialists working together rather than one full in-house office - is what we see working well for most families outside the very top of the wealth spectrum…

The AI skeptic's guide to AI in the family office.

Don’t Share Confidential Data with AI for Convenience

Do you really want to send your family's confidential portfolio data straight to anthropic or openai because it was faster than doing it properly? you shouldn't. The question isn't whether AI is safe enough in general, it's whether the data sits in a fully isolated environment built for you, with security you can actually verify, not shared infrastructure dressed up as convenience…

The real inheritance isn’t the money, it’s the capacity to carry it well.

Preparing heirs for wealth, not just inheritance

Most families prepare their wealth for transfer. But far fewer prepare their children for what that wealth will ask of them…

Living Large: the finer things in life

The 50 greatest luxury hotels on earth. Hospitality industry specialists who service the world’s most discerning clientele were asked to vouch for five newer properties they regularly recommend, alongside past favorites. Here’s the top 50, featuring hotels in the middle of Antarctica through to the capitals of Europe - Robb Report

Hope Lodge, Scotland

Tim Brown, co-founder of Somos22 and Fortaleza networks.

This week we spoke with Tim Brown, an advisor to the family office of billionaire Philip Anschutz, whose diversified holdings include ownership of more than 70 entertainment venues worldwide plus ownership stakes in the NHLs LA Kings and MLS's LA Galaxy.

Brown spent most of his career building businesses and communities, and ended up becoming an operating partner for the Anschutz family (he was also previously married to one of Philip Anschutz’s daughters), before chairing the YPO Investing Network, the peer investing community within YPO.

Aside from consulting work, his focus is on the Somos22 and the Fortaleza family office networks that he co-founded, each having a slightly different focus. 

“Somos22 exists to create trusted environments where meaningful relationships begin. Fortaleza is the deeper layer, an invitation-only community where those relationships compound over years through peer learning, shared experiences, and a high level of trust. Together, they're designed to help family offices become less transactional and more relational.”

Members are principals, CEOs, CIOs, executive directors, or senior professionals serving single-family offices, but all united by a single thread.

“What they have in common is curiosity, generosity, and a desire to learn from peers rather than simply expand a network.”

Brown was initially surprised by just how hungry family offices are for genuine peer relationships. 

“Despite having access to virtually every advisor imaginable, many still feel isolated when facing the decisions that matter most. Creating environments where people can speak candidly has proven even more valuable than I expected.”

It’s often isolation that leads families to over-rely on advisors or make important decisions without the benefit of peer perspective, he adds.

“It can create unnecessary anxiety because families assume they're the only ones facing a particular challenge. Simply hearing another family say, ‘We went through that too,’ often changes the quality of the conversation and the confidence behind the eventual decision.”

Brown also notes that despite being excellent in certain areas, many advisors fall short when it comes to lived experience. 

“Most advisors focus on solving technical problems. Family offices often need help navigating human ones. Governance, succession, family dynamics, trust, and decision-making are rarely solved through expertise alone. The best peer conversations happen because someone else has actually lived through the same challenge and can speak from experience rather than theory.”

The issue of family offices having great advisors but few trusted peers is what led to forming Somos22 and Fortaleza. 

“We help solve that by creating environments where authentic relationships can develop over time, allowing members to share experiences, exchange ideas, and learn from one another in ways that are difficult to replicate through traditional conferences or networking events.”

And when it comes to these peer discussions, Brown says investment is rarely a priority. 

“Members are far more interested in how other families make decisions. They're curious about governance, next-generation engagement, hiring CEOs and CIOs, building family offices, compensation, direct investing, AI, philanthropy, and what has or hasn't worked in practice. The conversation is often less about ‘what did you buy?’ and more about ‘how did you decide?’”

Brown says AI is probably the topic creating most anxiety with members, but it’s not the only one.

“Artificial intelligence is certainly one area, but I think the deeper question is how families preserve judgment in a world where information is becoming abundant. Members are asking what capabilities should remain deeply human, how to prepare the next generation, and how to ensure institutional knowledge isn't lost as leadership transitions occur.”

He believes that while much of the wealthtech focus is on investments, this might not be where the most value will come.

“The next wave of innovation won't simply be better investment products or better technology. It will come from helping families make better decisions together. Governance, communication, relationship intelligence, and trusted peer learning remain significantly underdeveloped compared to investment management.”

Regardless of which areas evolves quickest, Brown firmly believes that peer networks will remain essential in creating the environments where trusted relationships can compound and help families make better decisions together.

“Technology will make information increasingly abundant, but trust will remain scarce.”

Sponsor the Mr Family Office Newsletter We’ve been named the second most read family office news media after Bloomberg. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience of 80k+  Find out more

What to read

In his latest collection of essays, The Land and Its People, David Sedaris turns travel, ageing, family and friendship into a series of sharp and often hilarious observations about how people behave when they are uncomfortable, privileged or simply out of place.

What to listen to

In this episode of TotalFamily’s podcast, Visionary Advisor, we can hear directly from Tim Brown as he discusses how Jeffersonian dinners help families go beyond financial wealth.

Arnaud de Coninck, Chief Revenue Officer at Trusted Family.

Wealthy families have become more geographically dispersed than ever, and this applies to both how they invest as well as where they’re located.

Ocorian’s study showed that 60% of family offices surveyed have opened additional offices in different jurisdictions over the past five years, while UBS reported that 88% of family offices report having bankable assets in two or more jurisdictions.

With family members scattered around the world, approaching sensitive discussion points and key governance decisions isn’t as easy as just gathering everyone in the dining room.

This is where things can quickly start to go wrong, particularly when it comes to trust and relationships with advisors.

It’s no surprise then that there’s dedicated software today that aims to counter these challenges.

This week we spoke with Arnaud de Coninck, Chief Revenue Officer at Trusted Family, a platform that he describes as “designed to be the full operating system for family businesses, family offices and their advisors, giving them a single, secure environment to structure how people, information, and decisions come together across entities, committees, and generations.”

de Coninck tells us that Trusted Family was born from a singular idea: that families thrive when they stay connected.

It was started in 2007 by two next-gen leaders that were faced with the geographic challenges modern families face.

“Their families were growing, spreading across geographies, and navigating increasingly complex governance. The original goal was to strengthen the affectio societatis, the sense of belonging that holds a business family together, and to break the pattern where most families lose alignment by the third generation.”

He says they wanted a better way to share information, stay aligned across distance, and prepare for the future.

And what began as a solution for their own families evolved into a platform used by over 200 families across 35 countries today.

One of these is a seventh generation family with more than 200 shareholders, with wealth that stems from a 150-year old business. de Coninck highlighted them as a prime example for just how user friendly the software is, citing direct feedback on the platform from the client:

“From our 95-year-old cousin to our youngest family members, everyone has picked it up, and it is helping us stay together as a family.”

We asked him to share more on Trusted Family as a company, tech solution and what makes it unique.

What is the overarching mission of the company today?

Our mission is to help family businesses and family offices operate at maximum capacity with their key board members, shareholders, family members, and advisors. We think of ourselves as the operating system for these families and their advisors. The decisions they make have a real impact on the world we live in, and we help them create transparency, clarity, efficiency, and alignment through technology that is genuinely simple to use.

How big is the team, and where are you located?

We are a team of around 25 people worldwide, headquartered in Brussels, with offices in Austin, Texas, and Lisbon, Portugal, and team members reaching further afield, including Latin America and the Middle East. That global footprint is deliberate. Our clients are spread across 35 countries, and having people close to them, in their time zones and languages, is part of how we serve them well.

What are the core features that set Trusted Family apart from other offerings?

First, we are purpose-built for family businesses, family offices, and their advisors. It is designed from the ground up for how these families actually operate, by family members who perfectly understand the challenges they are facing.

Second, we bring the whole picture into one platform (de Coninck notes an extensive list here, including family engagement and collaboration workspaces; events and meetings, with agendas, pre-reads, RSVPs, minutes, and decisions in one place; a task management system; secure vaults for sharing and storing highly confidential documents; a structured path for Next Gen readiness; and more).

Third, the platform is backed by a dedicated success team that helps families put governance into practice. We strive to be more than just software they log into; we are a real partner in doing the work.

Fourth, every customer gets full access to our community. That means in-person conferences, the Trusted Family community platform, and TF Connect, where families can connect and learn from one another and know they are not navigating these challenges alone.

We were built by families, for families, and that shapes every part of the experience.

Some of the Trusted Family platform features.

How has AI influenced how the platform operates?

Today, the clearest impact is on engagement. Some of our customers are using AI to create genuinely compelling content on their family platform, from design to written updates, which lifts participation and keeps more of the family actively involved rather than passively informed. For a multi-generational family spread across the world, that difference in engagement is significant, and AI is helping our clients close it.

Looking ahead, we're building something more fundamental: an AI that genuinely understands your family and turns insight into action, inside an ultra-secure environment. For a family running decades of decisions, documents, and relationships on one platform, that means surfacing what matters before it becomes urgent, without ever compromising on the privacy families trust us with.

That last point is the one that governs everything. In a category built on discretion, AI only earns a place if it makes families safer and better informed, never at the expense of their privacy. That's the standard we hold every AI capability to.

What is commonly misunderstood about the role of tech in governance?

The biggest misconception is that technology creates good governance. It doesn't. Governance is a set of human decisions: who gets a say, how those decisions get made, and how the family stays aligned as it grows. Technology can't make those choices for you, and any platform that claims it can is overselling.

What technology does, however, is make good governance possible to sustain at scale. A family of 5 can run on trust and a group chat. A family of eighty, spread across four generations and a dozen countries, cannot. That's where informal systems quietly break: a decision made in one branch surprises another, a document circulates and no one knows who read it, the shareholder picture lives in someone's head. The structure was fine; it just couldn't hold as the family grew. Technology is what lets the structure hold.

The second misunderstanding follows from the first: that tech in governance is really about efficiency, saving time, and replacing paperwork. Efficiency is a nice byproduct, but it's not the point. The point is trust. When everyone can see the same information, knows a decision was made properly, and can trust that the right people were involved, the family makes better decisions and stays together through hard ones.

So the honest way to put it: technology doesn't govern a family. It gives a growing, complex family the infrastructure and the ability to govern itself well, which is something that gets exponentially harder without it.

Can you share an example of the platform significantly helping a family?

One that stands out is a Southern US family, seventh generation now, with more than 200 shareholders behind a business their founder started over 150 years ago. When we first spoke, they were running everything on a generic file-sharing system and it just wasn't working for them.

The less technical members couldn't really get the hang of it, and when that happens in a family that size, you start losing whole branches. They'd actually looked at us a couple of years earlier and decided they weren't ready, so this wasn't a snap decision.

Then they moved everything onto Trusted Family, one central portal, with documents distributed straight to the family's vaults. What changed was how the family worked day to day. The chairman said it best at our client conference: they'd gone all-in and stopped sending emails.

That's really the goal for us. Getting a whole family, from the members in their nineties down to the youngest ones, actually operating in the same place.

-

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 75K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across our website, social media and newsletters, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Partner content by Chirag Nanavati, Managing Director at Asset Vantage.

Family offices are beginning to evaluate AI across reporting, portfolio commentary, document review, risk summaries, tax workflows, and investment analysis. 

The interest is understandable. These offices manage large volumes of information across entities, asset classes, banks, custodians, advisors, legal structures, and operating businesses. Any tool that can reduce manual effort and support faster analysis deserves attention. 

But AI readiness in a family office is a little like an iceberg. What appears above the surface is the output: a summary, a recommendation, a commentary draft, a risk flag, or an answer to a complex question. 

What sits below the surface is far more important. 

The data. Reconciliations. Accounting logic. Ownership structures. Access Permissions. Audit trail. Source documents. Approval workflows. 

The controls that determine whether the answer can actually be trusted. 

AI can generate an answer. The harder question is whether the family office can trust what sits behind it. 

A family office decision rarely depends on one clean data point. It may draw on investments, accounting, ownership, tax, valuations, legal records, and advisor input. When those inputs are fragmented, AI can still produce a polished answer. 

The risk is that polished can be mistaken for reliable. 

That is why AI adoption in a family office should be treated as a governance question, not only a technology question. 

At Asset Vantage, this perspective comes from lived experience. Having worked with 400+ family offices globally, we have seen that the offices best positioned for AI are not necessarily the ones experimenting with the most advanced models.  

They are the ones that have already done the foundational work: consolidating data, reconciling investment and accounting records, defining access controls, standardizing workflows, and building confidence in the information layer. 

In other words, AI readiness starts before AI enters the workflow. 

For family offices, the opportunity is not just to ask AI better questions. It is to ensure the underlying operating environment is strong enough for those answers to be useful, explainable, and governed. 

The following checklist outlines the key considerations family offices should evaluate when/before implementing AI across financial, operational, and investment workflows. 

1. Establish a trusted source of truth: AI depends on clean, reconciled investment and accounting data.  Use systems that can provide the reconciled ground truth. 

2. Keep sensitive data under your governance: Prefer architectures that provide strong tenant isolation and robust access controls. 

3. Minimize external data exposure: Understand exactly where inference occurs, what data is retained, whether it is used for training, and the applicable data residency and regulatory requirements. 

4. Use the simplest technology that solves the problem: Many workflows are better served by rules, traditional machine learning, or deterministic automation than by large language models. 

5. Build security and governance into every workflow: Enforce permissions, maintain audit trails, and require human approval for high-impact actions. 

6. Remain model-agnostic: AI capabilities, regulations, costs, and geopolitical constraints will evolve rapidly, so design your architecture to support interchangeable models. 

7. Build checks and balances into every AI workflow: AI-generated conclusions and computations should be independently validated using deterministic calculations, business rules, or human approval to guard against hallucinations and incorrect reasoning.

Examples of building checks and balances: 

• Deterministic calculations: Portfolio returns, IRRs, valuations, allocations, and reconciliations should always be computed by your financial engine and not by any LLM that is conducive to hallucinations. 

• Source attribution: Every AI-generated answer should identify the underlying reports, transactions, or documents it relied on. 

• Confidence thresholds: Low-confidence or ambiguous responses should automatically be routed for human review. 

• Business rule validation: Ensure outputs conform to accounting policies, investment constraints, and compliance requirements. 

• Approval workflows: AI can draft journal entries with classifications or analytics reports, but any material financial actions should require approval before posting. 

• Continuous evaluation: Measure AI accuracy against benchmark datasets and monitor for drift as models and data evolve. 

The bottom line  

When the foundation is right, AI can help family offices move faster, ask better questions, review information more efficiently, and surface insights that may otherwise remain buried across reports, documents, and workflows. 

But trust still begins with the data beneath the answer.  

For family offices, AI readiness is not about adopting the most advanced model first. It is about building the system of record that allows AI to be useful, controlled, and trusted. 

-  

Chirag Nanavati is the Managing Director and part of the founding team at Asset Vantage, the financial operating system of choice for more than 400 family offices across 10+ countries, with over US$400B in assets tracked.

Powered by an integrated general ledger and advanced performance reporting, the platform delivers a complete, real-time view of assets, liabilities, and overall total wealth- enabling principals and their trusted advisors to make confident, informed decisions. 

A UNIDEL company, Asset Vantage provides a scalable, secure foundation for comprehensive wealth oversight and operational excellence.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 60K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Billionaire heirs trying to escape family shadow Our obsession with rich lists is a problem New BNY Wealth report on legacy planning Great Wealth Transfer greatly exaggerated? US businesses staying in the family Living Large: The Odyssey’s location travel guide

Some fun answers here.

Is The Great Wealth Transfer greatly exaggerated?

Wealth Transfer Size and Implications for Wealth Management Firms

Visa estimates that Boomers will pass on $36 trillion in the next 20 years – a fraction of the widely cited projection of over $100 trillion from Cerulli Associates. The “missing” $60+ trillion may seem academic. But it has important implications for wealth management firms, advisors and any company serving the wealthy and preparing for the next generation…

Don't let AI convenience eat you family's privacy for breakfast.

How AI is Being Used For Investment Reporting (And What To Watch Out For)

In the latest Family Office Sherpa Podcast I dig into one of my favourite topics (investment reporting) and how offices are increasingly using AI tools like Claude & ChatGPT to assist in the visualisation of their investment data…

New BNY Wealth report on legacy planning.

UHNW Families Lag in Wealth Transfer Planning

Wealth transfer planning is a priority, yet many ultra-high-net-worth families haven’t had the necessary conversations to prepare heirs for what comes next. Our new report finds that 51% of UHNW families have not updated their plan in the last year…

Living Large: the finer things in life

The Odyssey’s filming locations make for an epic travel guide. Christopher Nolan’s new epic was filmed almost entirely on location, and what locations they are. From Messinia in Greece to the vivid Sicilian coast, on to Morocco, Iceland and Scotland, the movie makes for an inspiring guide for your own personal odyssey - Vogue

Partner with Mr Family Office Connect with our community of 80K+ family office professionals & UHNWIs. Across our website, social media and newsletter, Mr Family Office reaches an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Switzerland didn’t invent the concept of family offices, but it perfected them. 

And while other hubs try to market themselves as the next big thing, the Swiss quietly get on with the business of managing trillions.

But does it still have what it takes to lead the world in wealth?

Recent headlines declared that Hong Kong had overtaken Switzerland for the first time as the world’s largest offshore wealth hub.

And there was concern over inheritance taxes, though the Swiss voters rejected a proposal at the end of last year that would’ve imposed a 50% inheritance and gift tax on wealth exceeding CHF 50 million ($61 million).

It’s also worth remembering it’s only three years ago that 150+ year old banking institution Credit Suisse failed.

So what’s the sentiment like on the ground today?

Lisa Cornwell Webb, Partner, Leader Private Clients & Family Offices at PwC Switzerland, has over 20 years experience providing advice to international private clients and family offices and very much still believes the country is the leading wealth hub.

“Switzerland is the global gold standard for continuity, political stability, discretion, and quality—strengths that have remained unchallenged for decades.” 

She notes that the growth in other jurisdictions has simply made Switzerland part of a multi-hub trend, and believes having more jurisdictional options is a net positive for clients.

“Many of our ultra-high-net-worth clients now operate co-existing family offices; they may establish their primary hub in the UAE or Singapore, but they still maintain a strategic presence in Switzerland for its unique wealth preservation advantages.”

For affluent families looking for an established ecosystem with an abundance of talented resources to locate their office, the country continues to attract wealth.

“The beauty of Switzerland is the flexibility and depth of experienced practitioners based here - there are many family offices based here with ultimate oversight of families and their business owned via sprawling structures spread across the globe.” 

We also spoke with the CEO of a sizeable single family office who is based in Zurich and very much echoed this sentiment.

“For family offices it’s stability, competence and quality of life. Switzerland is well organized without being intrusive. Banking, advisory and wealth management are excellent. On a personal level, it’s difficult to beat: it’s safe, clean and beautiful, and the ski pistes and lakes are always within easy reach.” 

He did note from his experience of being based there for over fifteen years that hiring can still present a challenge for family offices.

“Switzerland has a deep pool of financial, legal, investment and fiduciary expertise, but family offices are competing with private banks, asset managers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and increasingly technology businesses.”

A cultural challenge is that despite almost 30% of the population in Switzerland being foreign nationals, integration isn’t always easy, regardless of wealth.

“It is still difficult for auslanders (foreigners) to be fully accepted and integrate with the local Swiss. It takes a long time to build trust but when you do the relationships are durable.”

But ultimately he admits the location is hard to beat from both a global and regional perspective. 

“Switzerland’s location at the center of Europe undoubtedly helps access to deals and markets across the continent even if Switzerland is not part of the EU. The international environment in Zurich and Geneva also mean the networks are there to help you work across jurisdictions, currencies and languages.”

Cornwell Webb also highlighted families leveraging Switzerland as a sophisticated, neutral gateway to access pan-European investments. 

In terms of favorable environment, she pointed out three key areas that support family offices operating here: 

• Regulatory: Single Family Offices (SFOs) enjoy a light-touch regulatory environment with no FinIA licensing required (subject to AML compliance). Multi-Family Offices (MFOs) and trustees operate under a robust, highly trusted framework requiring FinIA/FinSA licensing.

• Corporate Tax: Highly competitive rates (11.9%–21.6%) coupled with powerful incentives like participation exemptions, R&D deductions, and regional tax holidays.

• Individual Tax: Progressive income and wealth taxes apply, but qualifying non-Swiss citizens can access an attractive, highly predictable lump-sum (expenditure-based) taxation regime if moving into Switzerland. 

While the global wealth industry continues to grow and evolve, the wealthy still concentrate around key hubs, with three-quarters of the global UHNW population residing in just ten countries.

New hubs will continue to emerge as countries fight to attract foreign wealth, but with its long history of servicing the world’s wealthy and seemingly unshakable stability, it’s highly unlikely Switzerland will be troubled by this.

Switzerland: Facts & Figures, Pros & Cons

The Basics

• Population: ~9.1 million

• GDP: ~$1 trillion USD

• Main Industries: Banking, pharmaceuticals, precision engineering, commodities, insurance

• HNWIs & UHNWIs: ~944,000 USD millionaires; ~17,700 UHNWIs ($30m+)

• Expats: 25%-27% of population; major groups from Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, UK

• Languages: German, French, Italian, Romansh (plus fluent English in business)

• Time Zone: Central European Time (CET)

• Transport: 1-2 hour flights from all major European cities; private aviation hubs in Zurich, Geneva, Lugano

The Family Office Scene

One of the most established wealth management ecosystems in the world, built around trust and discretion, and long term multi-generational understanding of wealth preservation.

The country is littered with private banks, investment boutiques and advisory firms, trust and estate management companies, with various government-back platforms to support everything from philanthropy to venture capital investment.

Zurich and Geneva are both financial powerhouses, while Zug has emerged as a hub for companies focused on innovation in digital finance.

The Swiss Single Family Office Association provides a framework for local family offices and does also do independent studies on the overall landscape as well as sharing operational insights.

Tax

Switzerland is tax-efficient… but not tax-free.

The country’s federal structure means tax is levied at federal, cantonal and municipal levels—so rates vary significantly depending on where you’re based (think Zug vs Geneva).

• No federal wealth tax — but all cantons levy cantonal/communal net wealth tax, with rates varying significantly by location, typically ranging from around 0.1% to 0.9% depending on canton, municipality and wealth level

• No inheritance tax in many cantons for direct descendants

• No capital gains tax on privately held securities (for individuals)

• Competitive corporate tax rates (as low as 11–14% in some cantons)

• No exchange controls

Switzerland also offers:

• Lump-sum taxation for qualifying foreign nationals who take up Swiss tax residence and are not gainfully employed in Switzerland.

• Tax treaties with over 100 countries

• Trust-friendly Switzerland does not have a domestic Swiss trust, but it recognizes foreign-law trusts under the Hague Trust Convention, which has applied in Switzerland since 2007

• Advance tax rulings for predictability

Family offices are typically structured through holding companies, foundations, or foreign trusts with Swiss management.

A key distinction is between single-family offices and multi-family offices. A pure single-family office serving one family and controlled by that family may fall outside Swiss portfolio-manager licensing, but multi-family offices, external asset managers and trustees can fall within FINIA/FINSA.

Since the Financial Institutions Act came into force in 2020, portfolio managers and trustees carrying out commercial activity generally require FINMA authorization and supervision. Bottom line: it’s not zero-tax—but it’s smart tax planning heaven.

Lifestyle

If family offices were people, Switzerland would be the one who went to ETH Zurich, skis like a pro, speaks four languages and never misses a filing deadline.

The country excels at delivering good living…

• Ultra-high quality of life, with great indoor/outdoor balance

• One of the world’s top three countries for safety

• Plenty of old-world European charm in both cities and country villages

• Four-season climate (yes, real snow, real spring, real everything)

• Ultra luxury dining, fashion and hospitality offerings used to catering to the extremely wealthy

• A world leader in wellness, with the highest per capita spending on wellness globally

• Easy global access through Zurich and Geneva airports, plus easy access via train to regional centers

• Some of the world’s best private schools

Pros & Cons

Pros 

• Favorable tax and legal regulations

• High quality infrastructure and established wealth ecosystem

• Stable government and economy

• Strategic location at center of Europe

• Path to citizenship through investment and long-term residency

• Unbeatable quality of life (slopes in winter, lakes in summer)

Cons

• Tax efficient, not tax-free

• As high a cost of living as anywhere

• Culturally hard to integrate as a foreigner despite English being widespoken

• Reserved, conservative local culture that can feel very traditional

• Hiring challenges - up against top multi-national companies with local offices

What to read

Swiss Watching by Diccon Bewes is essential reading for anyone moving to or living in Switzerland. A fun, accessible primer on what really makes Switzerland tick beyond the clichés of banks, watches, chocolate and ski chalets.

What to listen to

In this episode of the UHNW Institute, the challenges and strategies involved in coaching and developing the next generation within family systems are explored. There is a strong focus on identity, legacy, and emotional maturity.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 80K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Billionaire summer camp kicks off this week New UBS Family Office Quarterly Will there be a U.S. wealth tax? The billionaire group-chat Living Large: Private chef salaries reach $300K

Trust issues.

New UBS Family Office Quarterly is out.

UBS FOQ Q3

 
I'm pleased to share the UBS Family Office Quarterly – Q3 2026, which explores how family offices are navigating today's environment through thoughtful investing, philanthropy, operations, talent management, and risk preparedness. There's also an insightful article on AI and the family office…
 

The new three-part human and financial capital strategy.

‘The first time ever in my career’: Senior Citi executive on why the ultrawealthy want to diversify away from America

I've been advising on this trend for several years. Initially, much of the work centred on human capital. Families sought a "Plan B" through a residency-by-investment programme. But many golden visa jurisdictions can absorb people, but not necessarily capital at scale. As a result, sophisticated families increasingly began separating their human capital strategy from their financial capital strategy. The model that emerged was often a form of triangulation…

https://lnkd.in/eX5fgKqb

What company stages are family offices targeting?

Family Offices Prioritize Venture Stage in Q3 2022

Each week, I put a question to our 𝔽𝕆𝕊 community of family offices. Last week I asked: 𝙒𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙣 𝙌𝟯 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲?

🥇 𝗣𝗿𝗲-𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 / 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 - 23%

🥈 $𝟱𝗺–𝟭𝟬𝗺 𝗘𝗕𝗜𝗧𝗗𝗔 - 15%

🥉 $𝟮𝗺–𝟱𝗺 𝗘𝗕𝗜𝗧𝗗𝗔 - 13%

Living Large: the finer things in life

Private chef salaries reach $300,000 as the rich seek their own Michelin stars. Ultra-wealthy clients are paying top dollar to enjoy the ultimate in gastronomy from the comfort of their own home, with added tailoring to personal tastes and specific diets. It’s part of a trend for big spending on key household roles that help manage the complexity in their lives - CNBC   

Partner with Mr Family Office Connect with our community of 80K+ family office professionals & UHNWIs. Across our website, social media and newsletter, Mr Family Office reaches an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

The super-rich are getting richer, and the global wealth map is being redrawn. Altrata’s new World Ultra Wealth Report 2026 reveals where fortunes are being made, who’s joining the billionaire class and how wealth creation is changing.

Altrata is a data intelligence company focused on “wealthy individuals, executives and their networks.” 

The company claims to have profiles of over 100 million individuals (!), noting the report “leverages Altrata’s unique and proprietary database, the world’s most extensive collection of curated research and intelligence on the wealthy.”

Measuring global wealth is not straightforward. Private banks and luxury reports use slightly different methodologies, so their estimates often vary. A striking example is the size of the global UHNW population: Altrata puts it at 556,850, while Knight Frank’s recent Wealth Report estimates 713,626.

Regardless, there are interesting insights within the numbers, and the report is a useful reminder of the makeup and rapid growth in the world’s wealthy over the last two decades. 

Figures are all built around high-net-worth-individuals (HNWIs) as those with over $1 million in assets, and ultra-high-net-worth-individuals (UHNWIs) as having $30 million or more.

Let’s dive in… 

Population 

The report shows that in 2025 there were just over 50 million HNWIs worldwide, not excessive when considering the world’s population is +8 billion.

Of those 50 million, the world’s UHNWIs make up just 556,850, or 1.1%. This sub-group of the world’s wealthiest includes the growing number of billionaires out there, and accounts for 32% of larger groups wealth, with $63.8 trillion in assets.

Perhaps most notable though is the rate of growth: UHNWIs have grown at a rate of 255% in last 20 years, and grew 14.4% last year alone.

Regional

Wealth is concentrated in global hubs, but it’s perhaps even more concentrated than you’d think. Three-quarters of the global UHNW population reside in just ten countries, and the United States leads these by some way, home to 37% of the global UHNW population. It’s followed by China and Germany, but with significant differences.  

As expected based on total growth, all ten top UHNW countries reflected growth in the last year, with Hong Hong showing the highest growth. The United Kingdom even reflected 16% growth, despite the headlines on an ongoing wealth exodus. 

When it comes to the most UHNW-populated cities, New York wins and is also the city home to the most billionaires as well as the most millionaires. Hong Kong and Los Angeles take second and third. Worth noting that billionaire hotspot cities like Beijing or Shanghai don’t feature in top 10.

Projections 

Altrata research suggests the global UHNW population is expected to reach 746,570 by 2030, with Asia expected to account for the largest growth. This is driven by India, South Korea and Taiwan as well as Indonesia and Vietnam. 

The Middle East has the lowest projected growth of all global regions up to 2030, an outlook that is based predominately around security risks.

Cities projected to grow the fastest in terms of UHNW population in this time are quite scattered: Delhi (as a commercial hub), Stockholm (technology) and Wuhan (manufacturing).

Global connectivity 

Further proof of how international the world’s wealthy have become: 17% of the ultra wealthy have an ownership stake in a business entity headquartered outside their primary country of residence. 

And 19.6% of the global ultra wealthy are foreign born, emphasizing the role of wealth hubs and major countries in attracting migration and driving innovation. 

It could be said youth is wasted on the youth, but then is wealth wasted on the elderly? The average age of North America’s ultra wealthy class is 68. And just 8% of the UHNW population are under 50 years old, with more than half aged 50-70. 

The world’s UHNWIs are still heavily male dominated, with women comprising just 12%, but this number is rising across all regions.

Source of wealth 

When it comes to source of wealth, self-made absolutely dominates. North America as a region has largest share of self-made wealthy individuals at 80.4% - but when it comes to an individual country, China leads at 92%. And the US has lowest inherited wealth level at 14% compared to 27% and 28.1% for Europe and Asia respectively.

Interests and hobbies 

Sport tops the list of interests amongst the world’s wealthiest across regions. More than just leisure, it’s become an extremely attractive investment class for the world’s wealthy, as we’ve recently covered, as all sports continue to professionalize and expand their reach through broader media rights, alongside the +$120 billion and growing sports betting market.

—

The world’s ultra-wealthy remain a tiny and highly concentrated group, but their numbers, fortunes and international reach are expanding rapidly. The names and locations may change, but one trend appears clear: the global wealth club is getting much bigger. 

What to read

Incorruptible by Eric Ries is an original look at how companies should be built. He describes how good governance can lead to bad outcomes, how founders do not always shape company culture and how the market is not always right. It’s not a family office book, but its lessons on ownership, governance and long-term stewardship are directly relevant.

What to listen to

The Billion Dollar PDF - in this episode of Invest Like the Best, host Patrick O’Shaughnessy interviews Jeremy Giffon of Octave about private markets, funding, story telling and his conversations with hundreds of founders.

And finally…

In June’s Wealthtech Monthly, we asked about tech budgets in family offices, here are the results:

We’ll be back on Monday with the best family office content of the week in the Buzz. Next week we’re taking a look at the Swiss family office scene.

Finally, if you know someone you think would benefit from this newsletter, sent them our way!

Right, that’s all for this week.

X

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 80K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Great Wealth Transfer is rattling Wall Street Colossal family wealth in India AI bets that Bezos’ family office making China makes moving wealth abroad harder Taking a global approach to talent Living Large: Louis Vuitton classic car rally in Italy

How do you cope with losing it all?

Co-investment considerations for SFOs.

Co-investment trade-offs for single-family offices

Our latest insight explains how co-investments work, the potential benefits and drawbacks, and the capability gaps family offices should evaluate before following a general partner…

China makes parking wealth abroad harder.

China Cracks Down on Cross-Border Capital Flow

Big Take here: Beijing has rolled out its clampdown on cross-border capital flow. We are watching how this is already rippling through Hong Kong — now the world’s top offshore wealth center. Private banks are tightening KYC, mainland clients face stricter wealth source declarations, red-chip IPOs have nearly vanished, and some UHNWIs are exploring second passports…

“Projections show that 55% of global wealth will be commanded by women by 2030.”

Women lead family offices in the Great Wealth Transfer

The Great Wealth Transfer is reshaping how capital is allocated and how family offices evolve. I joined Bloomberg to discuss how women are increasingly stepping into principal roles within family offices — not just as beneficiaries, but as decision-makers driving strategy, governance and long-term impact…

Living Large: the finer things in life

Louis Vuitton is holding a classic car rally in Italy. The Louis Vuitton Classic Run started with a drive through the Malaysian jungle in 1993, with subsequent races in China, France, Italy, and Central Europe, before the event wrapped up in 2012. Now the luxury marquee is bringing it back with a rally in the Dolomites this summer - Robb Report

A few weeks back we asked what franchises you were most interested in?

The results: fast food dominated with 45% of all votes, but coffee not far behind. There were a few interesting ‘Other’ suggestions, including MRI franchises.

 

That’s all for now, see you on 𝕏, reddit or LinkedIn.

X

Partner with Mr Family Office Connect with our community of 80K+ family office professionals & UHNWIs. Across our website, social media and newsletter, Mr Family Office reaches an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Lara Nuchowicz from family office AR Capital.

AR Capital is a Geneva-based family office started by Benjamin Nuchowicz, who built his wealth through one of Europe’s early fund of hedge funds.

This week we spoke with second generation family member Lara Nuchowicz, who was introduced to the business from an early age, and shares some insights on their setup and approach.

“My father came from a modest background and built his career from scratch as a futures and options broker before discovering hedge funds. He brought top managers to European institutional investors, and that business became our family office, set up in Switzerland in 2002. I grew up around the business and eventually started working alongside my father on it.”

While AR Capital is based in Switzerland and has entities in Luxembourg and Guernsey, they are primarily invested in the US, Israel, and Asia. 

“We've historically had less exposure to Europe, simply because we've found it less exciting, though that's not a permanent stance.”

Nuchowicz herself is based in Amsterdam, which is “more of a personal preference than a business decision”, and means a good amount of travel. 

“I travel at least a week a month between Europe, the US, Israel, and Asia, and spend the rest of my time on fund calls, family office meetings, and diligence.”

Investment strategy

Nuchowicz says their mission is to back the best emerging managers and companies in private markets as early as possible, investing consistently across vintage years in sectors like AI, deep tech, and biotech.

As far as asset allocation goes, they’re diversified across asset class, geography, stage, liquidity profile, currency, and sector. 

“Hedge funds make up around 30% of the portfolio; private markets—primarily early-stage VC funds and direct investments into early to pre-IPO companies—is another major bucket; fixed income is around 10% and managed fully in-house; real estate is roughly 10-15%; we hold a steady 10% in cash via money market funds; and the remainder sits in commodities and collectibles.” 

She notes they don't run much of a direct public equity book, with that exposure mostly from hedge fund allocations. 

“My father and husband run the hedge fund side — portfolio monitoring, manager relationships, and three core strategies (Global, Quant, Asia). We still manage some outside capital there, but the majority is our own.” 

Nuchowicz runs the private markets side, sourcing new funds, assessing co-investment opportunities, and monitoring a portfolio of more than 80 funds. 

“I also work with a handful of other families to help them allocate into funds, something we've effectively been doing for 20 years. We're a very lean team, with a dedicated fund director on the hedge fund side, but no large staff beyond that.”

Building their own tech 

Interestingly, alongside using Notion, Quill, and Attio for deal tracking, notes, and communications. AR Capital developed their own portfolio monitoring system.

“For the past four years we've used a proprietary system, built in-house, to monitor our portfolio — cash balances, exposures, diversification, and forecasting capital calls.”

They built the tool in-house around 2022, with the main driver being economics. Nuchowicz says there was “no off-the-shelf platform that made sense at that volume and price point, so building custom was the more sensible route”.

“We track an enormous number of lines: hundreds across our venture portfolio, around 150 direct investments, more than 30 hedge fund lines, more than 70 in fixed income, plus everything else across collectibles and other family entities.” 

Challenges and learnings 

Unsurprisingly, Nuchowicz highlights that the hardest part of running a family office is the family dynamic itself. 

“Working with your own father means navigating guidance that can sometimes feel more like control, and carrying a real sense of responsibility as the next generation, since if something goes wrong, it falls on you. I've been working with my father since I was 15, and we've gone through different phases to get to a good rhythm — when we disagree, we take space and come back with better solutions.” 

She also says that being a small team means they’re nimble and can move fast, but sometimes miss a more formal process, though it’s a tradeoff they've generally been fine with.

There have been some valuable lessons along the way, the first around emotional discipline.

“Early on I'd get FOMO on certain deals and let personal feelings about people cloud the actual investment decision. I've learned to separate the two, and to recognize that when my father says no to something, it's about the deal, not about me.” 

A second she says, is realizing that any real sourcing edge doesn't come from chasing opportunities, but from long-term relationships.

And lastly she notes the importance of getting comfortable with ambiguity: “At the early stage there's rarely enough data to feel fully certain, so you have to get comfortable making conviction-based calls with incomplete information.”

Succession started early

Her father Benjamin started including her in meetings from when she was just 15: “Point72, Tiger, Renaissance, Millennium, and venture funds like 8VC and Lux Capital. I'd take notes, and afterward we'd compare impressions.” 

“Eventually he gave me a small pocket of capital to invest on my own, starting in 2017 in consumer and female health, before I moved into deep tech, climate, and impact. I went to business school, which felt right at the time, though I sometimes wonder what a more creative path might have looked like.”

Lara Nuchowicz with her father Benjamin.

Nuchowicz says the hardest part was figuring out when to move on from other work and fully commit to working with her father.

“I tried working with him for a year in 2019, but at the time there wasn't much structure, process, or investment thesis in place, which was frustrating. There were also more personal tensions, like decisions tied to our tax and legal structure influencing where and how I lived. Eventually I had to be direct with him that those choices — where I live, how I live, with whom — were mine to make.”

Unlike a typical business partnership where parting ways is an option, she says the difference is that a family has to make it work.

“Succession gets harder with more heirs; in our case it's simpler since it's just two daughters. Fairness matters — rewarding the time and effort people actually put in, not just bloodline. Giving everyone a voice and building real governance matters too.”

As for the future 

The family office has worked with outside capital on the hedge fund side for decades, but are also exploring this further with venture. 

“We launched a pilot platform for partner families in the summer of 2024, and we're now launching a second vehicle. We're deliberately keeping the group small to keep the experience high quality. 

Longer term, the plan is to keep growing this as a real pillar of the family office, with more co-investment alongside partner families.

Beyond that, Nuchowicz is also keen to grow the team, and to tap into more direct deals, while maintaining an emphasis on capital preservation rather than aggressive growth.  

“My focus for now is on what I do best, the emerging manager space, and being patient about expanding from there. My father will be around for a long time yet, and eventually I expect to take on more, possibly new areas, but I'm not in a rush. Right now, I'm focused on what's in front of me.”

What to read

This seems like the most popular book on European beaches right now: a true story of corruption and tragedy in one of the world's great cities by the bestselling author of Empire of Pain.

What to listen to

The Family Office Sherpa Shaun Parkin breaks down five ways he has seen family offices successfully prioritize investment resilience over optimization.

What to watch

250 years of US independence this weekend! If you need some down time between celebrations, watch Larry David’s new show that takes a comedic look at major events in US history.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 80K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Los Angeles Stadium (Getty Images)

It’s the world’s largest sports competition, and comes with the most luxurious - and expensive - hospitality packages ever offered. Welcome to FIFA World Cup 2026. 

As we shoot through the tournament, all eyes are focused on the final in New York (well, New Jersey actually) on Sunday 19 July. If you’ve enjoyed the matches and now fancy going, it is still possible to buy tickets, but they will set you back a little.

Several luxury concierge firms are selling premium seats for the match - for as much as $1.5 million. But they do come with five-star penthouse hotel rooms, helicopter rides to beat the traffic to the stadium and private security.

Stuart McNeill, the boss of Knightsbridge Circle, a London and New York-based luxury concierge firm, told us he had already sold six tickets to the final for a total of $4M, and says he “has access to an additional two seats on the halfway line at the final, plus pitch side access to the trophy ceremony as the winning team lifts the cup. The price is $1.5 million for each seat.”

“Interest among our members has been strong, though many are waiting to see how their national teams progress before finalising plans,” he said. “Unlike fans attending as a bucket-list experience, our members tend to be personally invested in specific teams and outcomes, so flexibility matters.” 

“Behind the scenes, we're already securing premium hospitality, reserving accommodation and building highly personalised itineraries, particularly around seamless travel that doesn't disrupt members' personal or professional schedules.”

The Mark, a five-star hotel in Manhattan, is also offering six tickets to the final for a total of $1 million, including a four-night stay in its two storey penthouse and helicopter transfers to the stadium in New Jersey for the kick-off at 3pm local time.

McNeill said some of his members are planning “24-to-48-hour fly-in, fly-out trips for specific fixtures,” while others are “following their team throughout the tournament”.

“We are coordinating every element, from private jet charters, helicopter transfers and VIP airport assistance, through to luxury accommodation, dedicated security, private ground transportation and premium match hospitality, in order for members to focus entirely on the experience rather than the logistics,” he added.

McNeill said exclusive experiences around the matches are increasingly as important as the games themselves. “What's changed in luxury sports travel is that members increasingly value access over visibility,” he said. “Ten years ago, luxury meant sitting in the right suite. Today, it means experiences that money alone cannot typically buy.

“Alongside premium hospitality, members are requesting private dining, invitations to exclusive events surrounding the tournament, and opportunities to engage with leading figures from the sport.”

To achieve this, McNeill is arranging a series of “intimate lunches” with former England striker hero Gary Lineker and other former players “offering candid conversation and rare Q&A access with some of football's most recognisable figures”.

“The first rule is… you don’t talk about how much your seats cost.”

Erica Jackowitz, co-founder of luxury bespoke travel agency Roman & Erica, said for her clients it is “less about ‘going to a game’ and more about building an entire experience around one of the biggest global moments of the year”.

“The appeal of this World Cup is that it allows for a much more layered North American itinerary, where the match becomes the anchor, but not the entire trip,” she said. “These trips can very quickly move into the six figures once you factor in hotels, private aviation, drivers, hospitality, and staffing. With major global events, everything carries event pricing: hotels may require minimum stays, and drivers have minimums. It is the cost of optionality and ease.”

As one might expect, Jackowitz has arranged itineraries around Lionel Messi’s likely last appearance on the international stage.

“The primary motivation isn’t simply attending a World Cup game, it’s the opportunity to see Messi on what many fans believe could be his final World Cup stage. This itinerary includes premium hospitality, luxury hotel accommodations, private transportation, and additional experiences built around the match.”

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"Gus" the T-Rex, up for auction at Sotheby’s

‘Gus the T-Rex’ is likely to become the world’s most expensive dinosaur when he goes up for auction on 14 July (online bidding starts today).

The 67 million years-old dinosaur fossil is the star lot of Sotheby’s “Geek Week” auction in New York - and the latest example of a growing trend for wealthy people buying prehistoric artifacts to display in their homes. 

It’s a trend that started with ‘Sue’, another Tyrannosaurus rex, which Sotheby’s sold in 1997 for $8.3 million.

Since then prices have soared. Last year, a 150-million-year-old juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton fossil sold for $30.5 million. The ruling family of Abu Dhabi bought Stan, one of the most complete T-Rex skeletons ever found, for a then record-breaking $31.8 million in 2020. 

That record was broken in 2024 when ‘Apex’, a 27ft-long stegosaurus, was bought by billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin for $44.6 million. 

Griffin’s favourite childhood toy was a stuffed dinosaur, and memories of that were what led him to bid for Apex.

“I’ve always loved dinosaurs,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg. “I’ve always been fascinated by this moment in the history of our planet. To make sure that Apex, which was one of the greatest fossils ever found, stayed here in America to inspire generations of children about science was just an opportunity I could not pass up.”

Many in the industry quietly expect Gus - which has an auction estimate of $20-30 million - to beat Apex’s record as T-Rexes are by far the most popular species of dinosaur.

“Gus has definitely caught people’s attention,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s SVP, Vice Chairman, Worldwide Head Science & Natural History, told us while deftly avoiding direct questions of whether she expects Gus to set a world record price. 

Cassandra Hatton, Vice Chairman, Worldwide Head, Science & Natural History at Sotheby’s

Notably, while Gus’s estimate is below the sale price of Apex, it is the highest auction estimate ever placed on a dinosaur fossil.

“The dinosaur market is much broader than people think,” Hatton says. “And last year’s record number of new registrants for our Natural History sales really showed how engaged this audience is.”

Gus is an extraordinary specimen, ranking amongst the largest and most complete ever found. “The level of preservation is exceptional, and thanks to years of meticulous excavation and lab preparation carried out to the highest professional standards, the specimen is superbly documented and mounted beautifully,” Hatton says. “It’s truly a once in a generation find.”

Gus was found by fossil hunter Thomas Heitkamp who discovered it on a ranch in South Dakota that was owned by a recently departed cattle rancher Gary “Gus” Licking.

“This specimen took three years to excavate, with the team sometimes working four weeks straight without finding a thing,” Heitkamp says. “It really does feel like tackling the world’s hardest puzzle, except we have to find all the pieces first. All those bones separated for 67 million years that we can now, almost magically, fit back together. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.”

Gus’s skeleton is approximately 63% complete by bone count and 75-80% complete when it comes to the total mass of the skeleton. That is far more complete than most dinosaur skeletons - even those in museums.

Hatton says both avid fossil collectors and new buyers have expressed serious interest about buying Gus. “Some of the potential buyers do already own other fossils,” she says. “But we’re also seeing new buyers who’ve been waiting for something of this calibre.”

Some of the bidders are likely to be well-known in their own right. Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio have also all bought parts of dinosaurs, with Cage and DiCaprio going up against each other at auction in 2007 for a skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar (a close relative of the T-Rex). 

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Mention family offices and franchises, and most people still think of sports teams.

NFL. NBA. Premier League. 

But there is franchise activity in family offices today that has nothing to do with stadiums or broadcast rights.

It’s burgers, coffee, gyms, retail, childcare. Everyday businesses run well, generating cash day in day out, compounding for decades.

In a higher-rate, lower-forgiveness world, franchises are becoming one of the cleanest ways for family offices to own cash-generating operating platforms without pretending there’s a perfect exit around the corner.

Why franchises are back in favor

Franchises sit in a rare middle ground. They’re not public markets. They’re not classic private equity. They are operating businesses wrapped in a system.

You don’t invent demand. You execute a proven model. And you improve it incrementally.

For family offices deploying permanent capital, that combination can be highly attractive. In fact, family offices invested in franchises have been reluctant to share their success stories. 

But there are some making truly incredible cash-on-cash returns. 

Patrick Buckley, a two-time franchise founder and host of the Empires podcast, says franchises like Wingstop, Jersey Mike's and Nothing Bundt Cakes historically return in the 30-50% range.

“The best franchises, when paired with a quality operator, provide remarkably consistent and healthy cash-on-cash returns that other investment vehicles would struggle to match.” 

Franchises flip the focus back to fundamentals. And they deliver daily revenue, visible costs and local pricing power. And perhaps most importantly, control.

You can see why many families now prefer owning great operating businesses to being a limited partner in blind pools.

Case Study 1: Guy Hands and McDonald’s Nordics

A good modern example is British private equity legend Guy Hands.

In 2017, through his family office, Hands acquired the McDonald’s businesses across Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, becoming the Developmental Licensee for the Nordic region of McDonald's.

It wasn’t a typical private equity play, it was a personal, family-office investment.

As master franchisee, Hands controlled operations, capex, staffing, real estate, and expansion. McDonald’s provides the brand, the system, and the global demand engine.

Returns don’t rely on leverage or exit timing.

They come from site-level execution: Throughput, labor efficiency, property discipline, incremental expansion.

It’s a long-duration asset designed to compound.

That makes it a textbook family office move. No forced liquidity. No mark-to-market noise. Just steady cash generation from one of the most resilient consumer brands in the world.

Case Study 2: The Reimann family and global food platforms

Another example sits in plain sight, but is often overlooked because of its scale.

The Reimann family, via JAB Holding Company, has built one of the world’s largest collections of food and beverage franchises and franchise-like platforms.

Pret A Manger, Panera Bread, and a global coffee empire span multiple formats and geographies.

While not every asset is a pure franchise, the operating logic is the same.

Strong brands, repeat consumption, local execution.

JAB’s model leans heavily toward long-term ownership. Assets are improved operationally, expanded geographically, and held far longer than a typical PE cycle.

This is family office thinking at industrial scale.

The businesses throw off cash.
They employ tens of thousands of people.
They embed deeply into daily routines.

And they offer inflation resilience that purely financial assets struggle to match.

Franchises are certainly not about chasing the next concept or fashion. They build durable platforms around habits that don’t disappear in downturns.

Case Study 3: Berkshire Hathaway and “boring excellence”

Berkshire Hathaway also love franchises. 

Among its many operating businesses sits Dairy Queen, a franchise-heavy model generating steady cash flows across thousands of locations.

This doesn’t make the headlines in the way other Berkshire assets do, but it’s a franchise system that works with local operators, predictable demand and simple economics.

For Berkshire, it fits perfectly.

No urgency to sell. No pressure to optimize for quarterly optics. Just ownership of a business that does what it says on the tin.

It’s a reminder that franchises don’t need to be exciting to be valuable. They need to be dependable.

Why family offices like this model

The pattern is consistent. Franchises give family offices exposure to operating businesses without product risk. They allow control without starting from zero. And they scale in a disciplined, accountable way.

They also lend themselves well to governance. You can build boards, track weekly KPIs, and structure incentives around cash, not paper gains.

For families thinking about next-generation involvement, franchises are also a practical training ground. They teach operations, people management, and capital discipline in a way few asset classes can.

And unlike many private funds, the exit is optional. You can hold forever, refinance, pay dividends and only sell if it makes sense.

That flexibility is a real advantage.

Where families still go wrong

Buckley says a major misconception about franchises is that they have everything figured out, when in reality, franchising is a spectrum. 

“McDonald's is the most extreme version of a franchise, where yes, they pretty much do have their entire system and playbook figured out. Every little detail is taken care of, but they've been around for nearly a hundred years and have thirteen thousand locations.” 

He says even a franchise with twenty years of experience and a few hundred locations still has a lot of growth and lessons to learn.

For family offices exploring the space, he advises they pay careful attention to a few essential details. 

“The brand, their unit economics, and franchisor leadership matter more than anything else. I've met many talented operators who frankly picked mediocre brands with no momentum and it drags their upside down dramatically compared to picking winners.”

Franchises are not passive. Brand strength does not guarantee unit-level profitability. Bad sites stay bad and weak operators get exposed quickly. 

In fact, Buckley says the single biggest challenge with franchising is unit level profitability.

Beyond that, capex is real, recurring, and unavoidable. Remodels, tech upgrades, and system requirements must be underwritten properly.

Buckley says many franchises need to improve on technology.

“Tech is lagging in certain areas because the switching costs are so high in franchising that many brands are running on outdated tech stacks but can't afford to switch.” 

Most importantly, franchises live or die by people. If you can’t recruit, train, and retain strong operators, the model breaks down fast.

The families that succeed are the ones that treat franchises as operating companies, not yield products.

The franchise focus shift

Franchises are becoming more important to family offices because they reflect a deeper recalibration.

They reflect less obsession with exits and more respect for cash.

Owning businesses people use every week is not glamorous. But it’s starting to look like one of the most rational forms of long-term wealth preservation.

And one that Buckley believes still offers much opportunity.

“There aren't that many great concepts out there - so at the brand level there is a gap in quality.” 

_

What to read

Alicia Miller’s Big Money in Franchising explains why private equity has poured billions into franchises, viewing them as scalable businesses with predictable cash flow and proven operating models. Through case studies and interviews, she shows how investors grow franchise brands, execute roll-ups, and create enterprise value.

What to listen to

We had to go with Patrick Buckley’s podcast Empires this week. A look at brick & mortar businesses through stories, and interviews of multi-unit franchise operators, founders, and executives.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 80K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

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Partner with Mr Family Office Connect with our community of 75K+ family office professionals & UHNWIs. Across our website, social media and newsletter, Mr Family Office reaches an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

This year’s Henley & Partners Wealth Migration Report has had quite a dramatic change. 

No more headline number of millionaires migrating and which countries are winning or losing. Instead, this year’s report focuses on the attractiveness of each region. 

Their new Global Wealth Mobility Framework scores jurisdictions across 12 dimensions, from tax treatment to quality of life, geopolitical stability, and more.

This approach could be because it offers more value, or is perhaps related to several independent media sources last year disputing the accuracy of data used in the reports. 

We spoke with Henley & Partners Head of Private Clients Americas, Basil Mohr-Elzeki, who emphasized the shift in focus was about a deeper understanding.

“Previous editions focused primarily on annual millionaire migration estimates and directional wealth flows. While those figures generated significant interest, they could only ever capture part of the story and a moment in time.”

He says the focus now moves from asking ‘Where is wealth moving?’ to ‘Why is wealth moving?’

“Rather than focusing solely on annual migration activity, we are examining the structural characteristics that make some jurisdictions consistently attractive to internationally mobile wealth over the long term.”

Mohr-Elzeki said one of the most interesting findings was how wealth mobility has evolved beyond traditional migration.

“Historically, many assumed residence and citizenship planning was primarily driven by individuals seeking to relocate from less stable or less developed countries.” 

“What we are increasingly seeing, however, is strong demand from citizens of some of the world's most developed and wealthiest economies.”

Mohr-Elzeki notes that most are not actually leaving their countries though.

“What they are seeking is optionality: additional residence rights, alternative citizenships, education opportunities for their children, and greater flexibility should circumstances change in the future.

As jurisdictions become more competitive, the world’s wealthy are paying attention and acting accordingly.

This year’s report highlights how countries like New Zealand, Greece, Italy, and Latvia have benefitted from enhancing their own offering but also changes to competitors, like Spain’s golden visa closure and Portugal’s withdrawal of a real estate-linked investment route. 

Mohr-Elzeki says the most successful programs have generally been those that combine predictability, credibility, strong governance, and a clear value proposition.

“Among citizenship programs, the Caribbean citizenship-by-investment programs have consistently performed well because they offer efficient processing, legal certainty, and meaningful international mobility benefits.”

When it comes to jurisdiction ratings, the UAE is still on top, despite a tricky conflict-filled period. 

It has a Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score of 85.3 and the report states it’s “the world’s leading destination for internationally mobile wealth, anchored by zero income tax, a deliberately expanded Golden Visa framework, exceptional personal safety standards, and strong family inclusion provisions.”

Top-rated jurisdictions include Cayman Islands, Cyprus and the Netherlands - not the obvious names one might have expected like Hong Kong or Switzerland.

“This table highlights selected jurisdictions identified as leaders within the broader wealth mobility landscape.”

The report also highlights the concept of the "sovereign portfolio", and presents a few Case Studies of how combining the right mix of passports represents certain ideal scenarios.

These are almost like passport cocktails: try the Global Billionaire Family, a mix of Singapore, UAE, and Austria, garnished with Panama!

But Mohr-Elzeki says these sovereign portfolios have quickly become mainstream among affluent families, and he believes they will be a key trend going forward.

“Clients are applying the same diversification principles to jurisdictions that they have long applied to investment portfolios.”

“Families are increasingly combining multiple jurisdictions rather than relying on a single country for residence, citizenship, business, education, and wealth preservation.”

As for the evolution of the report itself, the shift from the ‘where’ to the ‘why’ makes sense in many ways. But without the headline-grabbing numbers, it doesn’t quite deliver the same interest factor.

What to read

Move - where people are going for a better future by Parag Khanna is very on topic this week. A big-picture look at why people, capital and talent are all becoming more mobile. Khanna argues that climate change, political instability, technology and demographics will reshape where people choose to live, work and build wealth. Published in 2021, but as relevant as ever.

What to listen to

A fascinating exploration of translating policy calls and portfolio returns. This episode of The Compound and Friends features Michael Zezas of Morgan Stanley discussing the big investment and policy themes shaping markets: AI capex, data centers, productivity gains, prediction markets, the 2026 midterms, the Fed, and enterprise software.

What to watch

A TED Talk on how to raise kids who question AI. AI education researcher Randi Williams has spent years studying how kids interact with technology and toys, and what she's found should make every parent stop and think.

And finally…

ICYMI, we sent out our monthly wealthech newsletter this week which included a look at private markets and tech and why family offices keep buying wealth technology they never fully use, as well as all the latest wealthtech news.

Last week we asked you about your preferred ways to network. Small private dinners and warm introductions were the winners!

Right, that’s all for today, time for a hydration break!

X

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 80K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Partner content by David Sawyer, CEO and Founder of Unlimited.ai.

A consensus is forming about the future of the private markets right now. It goes something like this: for the private markets to grow to $40 trillion+ through the wealth channel, all data must be standardized and distribution will be controlled top down to retail portfolios.

Only then can the private markets achieve the industry’s true growth potential. In this future, a few platforms will win the distribution war, big box alternative investment products will own the market, and the chaos of today's landscape will resolve into something streamlined and centralized. It will just be a slightly less liquid version of the public markets’ status quo, in essence. 

At Unlimited.ai, we believe the future looks very different. Our view is that access channels will proliferate, not consolidate. That view is shaped by over a decade of democratizing access to the private markets for high net worth individuals and family offices, prior to founding our company.

While the digitalization of the public markets over the last 50 years was done largely within the rails of regulated exchanges, the digitalization revolution that’s occurring today exists in a private markets ecosystem that remains fragmented and loosely governed. Unlike the public markets, there are no exchanges with powerful regulatory moats to compel standardization in the private markets.

Regulations are actually accelerating this trend by allowing a broader segment of Americans the ability to invest in private investments, and there’s an often-overlooked phenomenon coinciding with this: the explosion of access.

When SpaceX went public last week, there were hundreds of SPVs on the cap table and that doesn’t include the second and third layer SPVs in these SPVs. 

RIAs across the country are rushing to offer HNWI clients and prospective clients more alternative investment opportunities in order to compete. Direct access investment clubs, digital networks, and sector-specific investment marketplaces specifically tailored to HNWIs are growing rapidly.  

A family office or high net worth individual that used to hold five or six manager relationships through one intermediary now routinely holds twenty or thirty directly, spread across vintages, strategies, and geographies.

According to Capgemini’s 2026 World Wealth Report, the number of HNWIs working with only one wealth provider declined by 50% from 2019 to 2025 and the number working with 4-6 firms grew by 100%. Less than 20% of HNWIs today work with only one wealth management provider. This dramatic shift is largely caused by more access channels.  

Technology is the major enabler of this and it’s only accelerating with AI. It’s easier than ever to invest in a private fund or SPV. Subscription document completion, capital call funding, portal retrievals, complex portfolio reporting, and data analytics are now being streamlined by platforms like ours in minutes. Only a few years ago this could take days. Funds and private securities are now even being tokenized and we expect this to only enhance the ability to transact in illiquid assets more seamlessly. 

So what does this mean for the future of the private markets?

The talking heads pitching the consensus future tend to be the ones building the next would-be distribution infrastructure and it's worth asking who actually benefits if that vision plays out. A platform that aggregates supply and demand around its own rails is optimizing for its own toll booth, not for the individual investor seeking a less fee-heavy, more transparent and diversified portfolio. 

We think the future portfolio has more volume of investments, more counterparties, more types of securities, and more complexity.

The way to solve for the future won’t be by standardizing the distribution. It will be to build the infrastructure capable of managing it all – funds, direct investments, SPVs, public securities, interval funds, real world assets, digital assets, and whatever else the future invents that unlocks prosperity.

The future is decentralization and technology is the only pathway to create clarity from the chaos.

Technology - specifically AI - can be the great equalizer for the private markets, allowing individuals or small teams to invest like the most sophisticated institutions in the world in any asset class, any geography, and at any minimum. That's the future we’re building for.

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David Sawyer is the CEO and Founder of Unlimited.ai, the AI-native investment platform built to give family offices unmatched portfolio intelligence and clarity through a single integrated system. With more than 2,400 integrations and a fund database of over 500,000, the platform delivers real-time insights that empower informed decisions. Book a 30-minute demo at Unlimited.ai →

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