A comprehensive survey of family offices released on Wednesday by UBS highlights new investing trends and priorities among the ultra-wealthy. The most conspicuous of these is a marked shift in asset allocation towards bonds and other fixed income products issued by developed markets, which reflects an appetite for easy yield as higher interest rates become a fixture of the global economy.
The UBS report, titled Global Office Family Report, is based on a detailed survey of 302 single family offices that each have an average net worth of $2.6 billion. Family offices have existed for many decades as a means to preserve and transfer wealth across generations, but have soared in popularity in the last 15 years amid a surge of economic growth around the world.
As the chart below shows, the allocation of family office assets to fixed income in developed markets increased from 12% to 16% in 2023. Meanwhile, allocations to financial categories like emerging market equities and real estate has shrunk.
John Mathews, who leads UBS's Private Wealth Management practice in the U.S, told Fortune the prevailing sentiment among family office managers is "risk off" at a time when there are multiple opportunities to invest in safe products that pay 5-6%—including from cash in bank accounts.
"They want to maximize every ounce of yield they can get," said Mathews. "In some cases, bank deposits are as high as corporate fixed income."
In addition to fixed income, family offices also favored private equity and equities as top investment choices. Unsurprisingly, respondents named artificial intelligent as the most popular theme for their investments, followed by health tech and automation.
Another notable trend highlighted in the report is what family offices see as the biggest risk they face: geopolitics. Respondents overwhelmingly listed a major geopolitical conflict as the top risk both in the next 12 years and in the next five years—an unsurprising development given the recent wars that have broken out in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and ongoing tensions between the U.S. China.
In the near term, higher inflation and a real estate correction were named as the second and third leading concerns. But worry about these issues diminished over a 5-year timeline as respondents instead cited fears over climate change and a debt crisis.
Other sections of the report focused on preferred geographic regions for investing. In the case of US, European and Swiss family offices preferred their home markets, while managers everywhere had a strong disposition for American investments.
A final trend the report highlights is a modest shift back towards active management, which is a change from the passive strategies that have dominated the investment landscape in recent years.
The family offices surveyed by UBS included those with three or fewer employees, which represented 20% of the survey respondents, to giant wealth management enterprises that employ hundreds of people. According to Mathews, family offices typically employ their own investment managers but often need to turn to banks for complementary services like estate and succession planning, and educating the next generation.
