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The establishment of family offices in Asia Pacific is slowly growing, although it still has a long way to go to level with its counterparts in the West.
Only four percent, or 100 of about 2,500 family offices across the world are located within the region, with most in the US and Europe, said a UBS and Campden Research survey of family offices, which are private companies managing the trusts and investments of wealthy families.
The scarcity of family offices in Asia Pacific is attributed to different cultural attitudes in terms of wealth. For instance, the Asia Pacific values confidentiality the most, ranking a 1.28 on a scale of one to five, one being most important.
In contrast, Western family offices consider controlled and consolidated management of wealth the most important, earning a score of 1.43. Confidentiality only ranked second.
The survey polled 50 European and 35 Asia Pacific family offices managing under S$100 million to over S$1 billion.
According to Annie Koh, Associate Professor at Singapore Management University (SMU), wealth and death are still taboo for many Asian families, which explains their apprehension to appoint third-party service providers to manage their wealth. She added that some Asian countries closely relate confidentiality and personal security.
However, UBS and Campden still believe that the landscape may change in the future.
“As wealth continues to grow in the region and face more multi-generational pressures, there is likely to be a huge demand for services of family offices, leading to a boom in their numbers,” said David Bain, Survey Co-author and Head of Research at Campden Wealth.
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