The 2024 edition of the annual GFO report was compiled entirely in-house for the fifth year and provides the world’s largest and most comprehensive study of single family offices. UBS surveyed 320 clients globally in the first quarter and the online survey methodology was distributed to over 30 markets worldwide. So what did UBS discover this year? Here to tell us is Maximilian Kunkel, chief investment officer for global family and institutional wealth at UBS Global Wealth Management. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to the Bulletin with UBS on Monocle Radio.
Each week, the sharpest minds and freshest thinkers in finance take you beyond the numbers and hype right to the heart of the big issues of the day.
Today we're dipping into the 2024 edition of the annual UBS Global Family Office Report.
The GFO was compiled entirely in house for the fifth year and provides the world's largest and most comprehensive study of single family offices.
UBS surveyed 320 clients globally in the first quarter and the online survey methodology was distributed to over 30 markets worldwide.
So what did UBS find out this year?
Well, here to tell us we have.
One of the key contributors to the piece, Maximilian Kunkel, Chief Investment Officer for Global Family and Institutional wealth at UBS Global Wealth Management.
It's a pleasure to welcome Max back to the show.
Well, look Max, always a pleasure to catch up with you and I kind of look forward to speaking to you when the Family Office Report is published each year because it's so interesting of course, to track trends, similarities, differences, often just give us a sense, first of all about the headline, I know the kind of subhead, if you like, of the piece this year's balance is back, but give us the kind of the big headline from the piece on the day that this year's edition comes out.
So I think that the big headline is really that portfolio shifted to more balanced allocation with the highest weightings of developed market fixed income seen in five years.
So since we actually started doing the study in house, we're also seeing is that confidence in active management has increased as a means of portfolio diversification.
In terms of themes, artificial intelligence unsurprisingly tops investment themes and alternative investments continue to form a significant part of portfolios, providing an additional source of diversification and returns.
In terms of concerns, medium term family offices are most concerned about the danger of a major geopolitical conflict, climate change and high debt levels.
Yeah, and we'll talk a bit more about the differences between geographies in all different respects in a moment, Max, but just on the sort of allocation shifts.
When you talk to the family offices in different markets, how different is the regional allocation from place to place in terms of where?
Especially in that sort of equities.
In equities play where people are looking, is that broadly similar?
Are there some interesting contrasts?
So first and foremost, maybe if we talk about asset allocation, we got to be thinking about what are we talking about here?