One of the largest transfers of private wealth in a generation is under way across Asia-Pacific, and it is changing how the region's wealthiest families organise their money.
Analysis from McKinsey & Company, cited in a recent InTheBlack feature, estimates that between 2023 and 2030 high- and ultra-high-net-worth families across APAC will pass on roughly US$5.8 trillion (A$8.8 trillion) in assets. Most of what is happening in the family-office world follows from that one number.
As this capital moves to younger hands, families are formalising how they hold and run it. The preferred vehicle is increasingly the single-family office - a private company that manages one family's investments, estate planning, philanthropy and tax affairs.
The growth is already visible. Deloitte Private research counts more family offices in APAC than in Europe, and the region is forecast to outpace North American growth by 2030. UBS goes further, concluding that APAC will be among the top investment destinations for family offices globally over the next five years, with more than a third of the region's offices planning to lift their allocations to it.
Two cities have captured much of this activity, and the pull is deliberate policy. Singapore's 2020 Variable Capital Company structure exempts much of the income generated inside the vehicle. Hong Kong's 2023 concessions for family investment-holding vehicles sit alongside a system that generally does not tax capital gains, offshore profits or dividends.
Karina Wong FCPA, a tax partner at EY in Hong Kong, describes these low- and no-tax settings as game changers - not only for attracting offices, but as a route to tax residency for wealthy individuals from elsewhere. Malaysia and Indonesia, Bali in particular, are now courting the same investors with incentives of their own.
The most useful thread in the feature is a warning: the money is arriving faster than the discipline to steward it.
Consultant David Werdiger observes that successful families routinely overestimate their own investment expertise, assuming competence in one field transfers to portfolio management — and underestimate what the work actually demands. The structural gap is real too. Wong notes that APAC's offices are typically younger, more likely to hold first- or second-generation wealth, and lighter on the governance frameworks that Western peers built over decades. She expects that gap to narrow as asset allocation, tax and estate planning grow more complex - but it is today's problem, not tomorrow's.
Succession is the sharp edge. LH Koh of UBS frames the answer as aligning family values with governance structures while preparing the next generation through education and clearly defined roles. Werdiger's practical advice is to start that education early, because heirs need a baseline of financial literacy that not everyone naturally has.
Crucially, solving this does not require every family to build a large in-house team. Werdiger points to a virtual family office model for families with roughly A$100 million to A$500 million in investible assets, where senior investment professionals are engaged part-time or on contract rather than hired permanently - nimbler, and with access to people who already advise several families.
That is the same logic driving the fractional model more broadly. A family office does not need a permanent senior finance function to run institutional-grade numbers: fractional CFO support, fund administration, financial due diligence and transaction support can be drawn in as the mandate requires. It is how a lean office gets governance and control without the fixed overhead - precisely the gap DualMinds was built to close for family offices and funds across South-East Asia.
None of this looks like a passing trend. As Wong argues, governance and regulation will have to keep pace with newer, more complex allocations. And with trade tensions and volatility in view, Koh's counsel is an all-weather asset allocation built with professional advisers.
For families building wealth meant to outlast them, the message from the region is consistent. The capital will look after itself. The stewardship will not.
Source: The Asia-Pacific family-office boom - Cameron Cooper, InTheBlack (CPA Australia), November 2025.
