The late-2025 family-office research wave.
Five major surveys, one synthesis.
Within roughly five months of 2025, UBS, Citi, BNY Wealth, J.P. Morgan, and the RBC plus Campden Wealth pair each published a major family-office survey. Read individually, each tells a different story. Read together, they describe a buy-side that is reducing return expectations, leaning further into private markets and active management, accelerating AI adoption, and quietly turning to succession planning at a pace none of the prior years' surveys flagged.
A useful thing about the family-office surveys that the major wealth managers publish each year is that they overlap. When five of them ship within roughly five months, drawing on populations that themselves overlap in part, the points where they agree compound into something allocators can use, and the points where they diverge tell you where the editorial framing of the publisher is doing more work than the data.
This piece reads the five together. The aim is a synthesis a Canadian or cross-border buy-side reader can act on without having to read all five end-to-end.
The five publications, on the record.
| Publisher | Title | Population | Released | Average wealth | Survey window |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UBS | Global Family Office Report 2025 | 317 single family offices, 30+ markets | 21 May 2025 | USD 2.7B net worth, USD 1.1B AUM | 22 Jan to 4 Apr 2025 |
| Citi Wealth | 2025 Global Family Office Report | 346 family-office respondents, 45 countries | 16 Sep 2025 | USD 3.8B avg at the Summit cohort | Jun to Jul 2025 |
| BNY Wealth | 2025 Investment Insights for Single Family Offices | 282 SFO investment decision-makers | late 2025 | $500M to $5B AUM (most) | not specified |
| RBC + Campden Wealth | 2025 North America Family Office Report | 141 NA responses (of 317 global), part of Campden’s 12th Global Family Office Study | 16 Oct 2025 | USD 2.0B NA average | Apr to Aug 2025 |
| J.P. Morgan Private Bank | 2026 Global Family Office Report | not disclosed in the public summary | 2026 cycle | not disclosed | not specified |
Citations: UBS, “UBS Global Family Office Report 2025: all eyes on the global trade war,” 21 May 2025;[1] Citi Wealth, “Citi Wealth Releases 2025 Global Family Office Report,” 16 Sep 2025;[2] BNY Wealth, “How Wealthy Families Are Investing Now,” published 30 Dec 2025;[3] RBC and Campden Wealth, “2025 RBC and Campden Wealth Report: North American family offices adapt to uncertainty and embrace AI, innovation,” 16 Oct 2025;[4][5] J.P. Morgan Private Bank, “2026 Global Family Office Report” landing page.[6]
Where the surveys agree.
Return expectations have stepped down, hard.
The clearest cross-survey signal is that expected returns for the year ahead fell sharply versus 2024. The RBC plus Campden Wealth North America survey puts expected 2025 returns at an average of 5%, “down from 11% last year,” with 15% of respondents anticipating a negative outcome versus just 1% a year earlier.[4] The Citi 2025 survey reports nearly four in ten family offices expecting returns of 10% or more in the year ahead, with sentiment toward many individual asset classes “somewhat less positive than it was in 2024’s survey.”[2]
Private markets remain the centre of the portfolio.
The RBC plus Campden report says 88% of North American family offices have exposure to private markets, with private market investments comprising 29% of the average portfolio (down marginally from 30% the year prior). Private equity funds are the largest component; direct private equity is the most popular asset class for new investment.[4]
BNY Wealth’s reading, drawing on a global UHNW sample with assets of $250 million and up, frames private equity as “the cornerstone of family office portfolios” at 28% of allocations, with public equity at 15% and real estate at 13%. The “Big 3” combine for 56% of reported allocations. Among decision-makers managing more than $1 billion, “plans to increase private equity investments jumped 69% in the past year.”[3]
UBS reads it differently: developed-market private allocations remain “relatively high” at 21% in 2024, but those planning changes intend to lower to 18% in 2025, “with the reductions mainly driven by direct investments, as subdued capital markets and acquisition activity slow portfolio exits, while higher rates make financing expensive.”[1]
The reconciliation is sample composition. UBS surveyed earlier (January to April 2025) than RBC plus Campden (April to August) or Citi (June to July), and the UBS population skews more European and Asian than the BNY and RBC North American cuts. The directional consensus is private markets remain the largest allocation; the marginal direction depends on the population.
Cash has a moment.
Both UBS and the RBC plus Campden North America survey flag the same behaviour. UBS reports family offices “lifting their weightings in developed market equities and bonds, as they seek liquid opportunities for capital growth and yield in a volatile environment.”[1] RBC plus Campden says the primary 2025 investment objectives are “to improve liquidity (48%) and de-risk portfolios (33%),” with the majority of family offices believing cash will offer the best return over the next 12 months.[4] When the wealthiest investors in the world come to the same view that cash is the right defensive instrument, the trade is worth marking.
AI is the cross-cutting theme.
Every one of the five publications surfaces AI prominently. RBC plus Campden: “Three times more family offices are leveraging AI to improve operations, compared to 2024;” 29% use generative AI for investment reporting and 30% for research, both with majorities expressing further interest.[4]
BNY Wealth: “83% [of family offices state] they see [AI] as one of the strongest opportunities over the next five years, and a key investment tool. More than half of family offices (52%) say they’re using AI to help them make investment decisions.”[3]
J.P. Morgan offers the asymmetric framing: “65% of family offices plan to prioritize AI, yet more than half have no exposure to the venture and growth markets, where much of the innovation is occurring. At the same time, 79% of family offices have 0% allocation to infrastructure, despite its role as the physical backbone of AI through power, connectivity and logistics.”[6]
This is the gap that the Manager Watch column will return to: priorities that are not yet reflected in allocations.
Wealth succession is moving from concern to plan.
RBC plus Campden: 47% of North American family offices expect control to transition to the next generation within the coming decade and 22% within five years; 69% now have a succession plan in place, up from 53% the prior year.[4]
UBS, on a global sample: 53% have wealth succession plans for family members. Of those without, 29% say beneficial owners have “plenty of time,” 21% say owners “have not decided how to divide up their wealth,” and 18% say owners “did not want to share details with the family.” Where plans exist, “the greatest challenge remains ensuring the transfer of wealth in the most tax efficient manner, according to almost two thirds (64%).”[1]
The RBC plus Campden number for 2025 (69%) is meaningfully higher than the UBS 2024-survey number (53%), and the population skew goes some way to explain it: North America is further along the cycle. The directional signal is the same.
Where the surveys diverge.
Risk framing.
UBS opens with trade war as the dominant 12-month risk (70%), then geopolitical conflict (52%), then inflation.[1] Citi opens with investment risk (70%), then operational (37%), then family-related (33%).[2] RBC plus Campden frames the risks as “largely attributed to the U.S. administration’s early tariff announcements,” with constrained global growth and inflation as the top expected outcomes.[4]
UBS surveyed first; Citi and RBC plus Campden surveyed later. The framing moves from “the trade war is the risk” in May to “investment risk is the risk” by September to “the tariff announcements caused all of this” by October. Each version is on the record. The order of publication matters when reading them together.
Hedging.
J.P. Morgan: “Across global family offices, traditional and emerging hedges remain limited: 72% report no gold exposure, and 89% report no exposure to cryptocurrencies.”[6]
BNY Wealth: “Of the family offices we surveyed, 74% say they are already invested or actively considering crypto, a 21% jump from a year ago. Those with no exposure or interest [have] fallen sharply, down 37% from a year ago.”[3]
These are not the same population, and “actively considering” is not “invested.” But the gap between J.P. Morgan’s 89% no-crypto and BNY Wealth’s 74% invested-or-considering is wide enough to be the most striking single-fact divergence in the five-survey set. A subsequent Manager Watch piece will work out where the discrepancy lives.
Inflation and alternatives.
J.P. Morgan’s strongest cut: “Global family offices that view inflation as their primary risk allocate nearly 60% to alternatives, roughly 20 percentage points higher than the average. These offices focus especially on hedge funds and real estate, where average allocations are nearly double (25% vs 12%).”[6]
The other publications do not split alternatives allocations by stated risk view in the same way. This is one of the more useful J.P. Morgan findings precisely because the conditional-on-risk-view framing is rare in the public survey literature.
What this means for a Canadian buy-side reader.
The North American cut from RBC plus Campden is the closest of the five to the Canadian operating context, and its specific numbers are the most directly applicable. The 2025 expected return of 5% is the headline. So is the 88% private-market participation rate.[4]
Two other notes worth carrying.
Sample composition matters. The Citi survey draws heavily on the Family Office Leadership Summit cohort, which the press release describes as “over 150 family office leaders from more than 25 countries, with an average family net worth of $3.8 billion;” the survey then opens to “the wider population of family office clients globally.”[2] The UBS population is “317 single family offices across more than 30 markets,” with an average net worth of USD 2.7 billion.[1] The BNY Wealth population is 282 SFO investment decision-makers, most with $500 million to $5 billion AUM.[3] Each publisher’s survey is drawn from a different slice of the universe. Treating their numbers as comparable on a single-percentage-point basis would be a mistake.
Selection bias on the publisher side is real. Each publisher has a service offering for the audience it is surveying. The numbers are genuine; the framing of the press releases is not neutral. A Canadian multi-family office like Prime Quadrant (Toronto-headquartered, with roughly USD 16.2 billion (CAD 23 billion) in client assets for about 225 ultra-wealthy families as of the end of Q3 2024 according to a Citywire account[7]) would read these surveys through a working practitioner’s lens. The publications are signal, not gospel.
What this column will do with them.
Two specific follow-ups land in the next two weeks.
Comparative tables. A normalized side-by-side read of allocation percentages, return expectations, and AI adoption across the five surveys. The methodology piece on the CME Tracker has already established the honest-framing posture: same here, with explicit notes where the underlying samples are not comparable.
A Canadian-specific cut. The RBC plus Campden North America numbers get a focused read paired with the most recent OSFI, Statistics Canada, and Canadian Family Office Association releases that bear on the same themes. The piece will note where the North America survey is dominated by United States respondents (141 of 317, “the vast majority from the U.S.”) and where Canadian-specific reads are extrapolations rather than direct data.[4]
Comments and prods at [email protected].
Sources
- UBS, UBS Global Family Office Report 2025: all eyes on the global trade war, press release, Zurich, 21 May 2025. https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20250521-global-family-office-report-2025.html. Saved as
ubs-gfo-report-2025-press-2026-05-29.mdin the research library underfamily-office/2025/. - Citi Wealth, Citi Wealth Releases 2025 Global Family Office Report, press release, New York, 16 Sep 2025. https://www.citigroup.com/global/news/press-release/2025/citi-wealth-2025-global-family-office-report. Saved as
citi-wealth-gfo-2025-press-2026-05-29.md. - BNY Wealth, How Wealthy Families Are Investing Now, dated 30 Dec 2025. https://www.bny.com/wealth/global/en/insights/how-wealthy-families-are-investing-now.html. Underlying report: 2025 Investment Insights for Single Family Offices. Saved as
bny-wealth-fo-2025-insights-2026-05-29.md. - Campden Wealth and RBC Wealth Management, 2025 RBC and Campden Wealth Report: North American family offices adapt to uncertainty and embrace AI, innovation, press release, Toronto and Minneapolis, 16 Oct 2025. https://www.campdenwealth.com/press/2025-rbc-and-campden-wealth-report-north-american-family-offices-adapt-uncertainty-and. Saved as
rbc-campden-na-fo-2025-press-2026-05-29.md. - RBC Wealth Management, 2025 RBC and Campden Wealth Report: North American family offices adapt to uncertainty and embrace AI innovation, newsroom, 16 Oct 2025. https://www.rbcwealthmanagement.com/en-us/newsroom/2025-10-16/2025-rbc-and-campden-wealth-report-north-american-family-offices-adapt-to-uncertainty-and-embrace-ai-innovation. Saved as
rbc-campden-na-fo-2025-rbc-press-2026-05-29.md. - J.P. Morgan Private Bank, 2026 Global Family Office Report, landing page. https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insights/reports/2026-family-office-report. Saved as
jpm-gfo-2026-2026-05-29.mdin the research library underfamily-office/2026/. - Prime Quadrant: Our Story. https://primequadrant.com/our-story/. Saved as
prime-quadrant-our-story-2026-05-29.md. AUA figure (USD 16.2 billion / CAD 23 billion as of Q3 2024 for ~225 families) cited from Citywire reporting on the Focus Financial split.