Family office allocations stay steady as risks change
Allocations have held relatively steady even amid the shifting investment risks cited by family offices. Asked to choose their top three among a dozen potential investment risks, 61% of family offices picked geopolitical conflict, followed by political instability at 39%, and economic recession at 38%.
“I think this traces back to a very active newsfeed, both politically and geopolitically,” says Tony Pasquariello, global head of hedge fund coverage for Global Banking & Markets and a coauthor of the report. Other investment concerns such as inflation and high market valuations ranked lower than politics and geopolitics in this year’s survey responses.
Family offices reported that 42% of their funds were allocated to alternative asset classes such as hedge funds and private equity, down slightly from 44% in 2023.
“Family offices are quite committed to their asset allocation,” says Sara Naison-Tarajano, global head of Private Wealth Management Capital Markets and Apex, another of the report’s coauthors. “Despite being in a totally different market environment than we were two years ago, you really see a pretty similar allocation.”
Related to this, some 35% of respondents from the Americas region said they are not focused on hedging for tail risk. “These families have been through market cycles with deep dislocations,” Naison-Tarajano explains. “They saw those events as opportunities to buy, and saw the markets come back, so they worry less about hedging for that risk.”
Family offices’ patient capital often lends itself well to investing in innovation trends, and that holds true today. A majority of respondents (58%) expect to be overweight technology in the next 12 months, compared with just 5% who say they will be underweight. That’s by far the biggest overweight in the survey results for any sector.
“A lot of the technology focus is AI-driven” explains co-author Meena Flynn, co-head of Global Private Wealth Management. “Family offices are getting exposure through public equities but also through the private markets, with investments in infrastructure that supports development of AI such as energy.”
The majority of family offices are still not investing in cryptocurrency, but this is one area where attitudes are changing. In the 2025 survey, 33% of respondents said they’re investing in crypto, up from 26% in 2023, and just 16% in the first edition of the survey in 2021.
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