The new risk calculus: what's driving family offices back into alternatives

Ocorian Insights – for principals, families and their advisers

For much of the last decade, "risk appetite" among family offices was a careful, defensive conversation. That conversation has changed.

Three-quarters of family offices now expect to take on more investment risk over the next 12 months, and the reason isn't recklessness. It's confidence born of better information. For families and the intermediaries who advise them, the question is no longer whether to move further into alternatives, but how to do so without outpacing the structures, governance and reporting that should sit underneath.

What's actually changing

Across 16 markets, from the UK and U.S. to the UAE, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, the direction of travel is strikingly consistent:

• 75% of family offices expect their risk appetite to rise in the next year, with 13% anticipating a dramatic increase.
• Private equity leads the shift. Every family office surveyed plans to raise its PE allocation over the next two years, and two-thirds intend to increase it by 25 - 50%.
• The appetite extends across the alternatives spectrum: 96% plan to increase private capital exposure, 93% private debt, 88% infrastructure and 86% real estate.

This isn't a rotation. It's a broad-based repositioning.

Why now, and why it matters for you

The most important finding isn't the what, it's the why. The single biggest driver of rising risk appetite is greater transparency around alternative asset classes (cited by 61%). In other words, families are leaning in because they can finally see more clearly.

That has a direct implication for principals and advisers: the edge now lies less in access to alternatives and more in the quality of the information and oversight wrapped around them. The families pulling ahead are those whose reporting, valuation and governance keep pace with the complexity they're taking on.

Two other forces shaping decisions include:

• Macro tailwinds - nearly half (48%) point to falling interest rates and the outperformance of AI and tech as reasons to add risk.
• Geopolitics as a forcing function - 46% say instability leaves them with little choice but to adapt their stance. As Ocorian's Andy Bailey notes, many feel rising geopolitical uncertainty is "leaving family offices with little choice but to increase their risk appetite."

For intermediaries, that reframes the brief: clients aren't only seeking return – they're seeking resilience and clarity in a less predictable world.

ESG isn't a casualty of higher risk

A common assumption is that a sharper focus on returns dilutes value-based investing. The data says otherwise: 99% of family offices treat ESG as a key consideration and 79% expect that focus to increase over the next three years. Higher conviction and principled investing are moving in the same direction – not competing.

The practical takeaway

Greater ambition in alternatives raises the bar on everything behind the scenes; structuring, consolidated reporting, governance and the ability to operate confidently across multiple jurisdictions. The opportunity for families and their advisers is to make sure the operating model is ready before the allocations land, not after.

The families who navigate this shift best won't simply be those who took on more risk. They'll be the ones who took it on with the transparency, structure and oversight to back it.

Based on a global Ocorian study of family members and senior executives at family offices with combined wealth of $119.37bn, across 16 countries and territories.