Future of Family Offices: Global Market to Surge to $11.41 Trillion in Two Years

2  min read

The global family office market is a hard nut to crack for asset manager sales execs, a secretive and opaque world but one full of opportunity if you make the right connections.

Reliable data on the size of the family office market internationally is challenging to come by, both in terms of the number of single-family offices and their aggregate assets under management. Very few single-family offices disclose their AuM.

The multi-family office market has more transparency, but only 30% of MFOs openly report their AuM.

With Intelligence and the Highworth Family Offices Database created a report showing the number of SFOs and MFOs by country and major region. Together with an aggregation of each family office’s AuM as estimated by Highworth Research analysts, this report shows the total value of the family office market in 2024 and forecasts its value in two years.

Since the Highworth Database does not yet track the entirety of the market, the numbers of family offices and their AuM as of May 2024 need to be added to a projection of further SFOs and MFOs to be discovered and added to the database over the next two years to 2026.

Highworth Research is in an advantageous position to undertake this analysis. The firm has been building an analytical database of single—and multi-family offices globally since 2008. The database comprises detailed profiles at over 3,000 family offices globally, of which 90% are single-family offices.

Key points emerging from the With Intelligence and Highworth Global Family Offices Report for May 2024 show:

Single family offices

  • As of May 2024, the total discoverable single family office numbers are 4,500, of which 2,700 are already profiled in detail on the Highworth Family Offices Database
  • The total estimated AuM of those 4,500 SFOs is $4.77trn, of which $3.23trn is now attributable to the 2,700 SFOs on the Highworth Database.

These AuM values have been adjusted to exclude those SFOs with AuM greater than $10bn, primarily non-addressable by a third-party asset manager.

Typically, these include those SFOs allocating directly to real estate, such as Pontegadea in Spain or Reuben Brothers in Switzerland, or those whose AuM primarily comprises ownership of a major stake in a listed company, such as L’Arche Holding with a major stake in Heineken, or those which are mainly substantial direct private equity investors such as Edizione on Italy, Marcel Dassault in France, or JAB Holding in Luxembourg, Adani Group in India, or some of the Arabian Gulf conglomerates part of which also serve as family offices for the owning family.

Multi Family Offices

  • As of May 2024, the total discoverable multi-family offices numbers are 2,500, of which 350 are already profiled in detail on the Highworth Family Offices Database
  • Total estimated AuM of those 2,500 MFOs are $6.647trn, of which $2.09trn is attributable to the 350 largest MFOs on the Highworth Database now

Single and multi family offices

As of May 2024, the total AUM of the 4,500 single-family and 2,500 multi-family offices is $11.41trn, of which $5.32trn is now attributable to those on the Highworth Database.

Family offices AuM compared with pension funds & the broader money management market

According to the Thinking Ahead Institute, the AuM of the pension funds market last year was $55trn, so the addressable family offices market size is 21% of that of global pension funds.

More widely, the global asset management industry had $120trn under management in 2023, according to the Boston Consulting Group, so family offices are accountable for 9.5% of this.

Discover Hidden Investment Opportunities with Family Offices

Highworth Research, home to the largest online database of single-family offices worldwide, is now part of With Intelligence.

You can also access exclusive SFO profiles, including private non-commercial multi-family offices unavailable elsewhere. Request a demo and learn more.