When family offices become institutions
02 Sep 2026
As family offices move further into private markets and manage increasingly global portfolios, their investment strategies are beginning to resemble those of institutions. But can their operational infrastructure keep pace?
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Family offices are investing more like institutions than ever before. Portfolios now stretch across public markets, private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, and direct investments, forcing the operational machinery behind them to catch up.
Goldman Sachs’ 2025 Family Office Investment Insights survey of 245 family office decision-makers found alternatives accounted for 42 per cent of average portfolios, including 21 per cent in private equity, 11 per cent in private real estate and infrastructure, 4 per cent in private credit, and 6 per cent in hedge funds. Looking ahead, 39 per cent expected to increase private equity exposure and 26 per cent planned to increase private credit. The shift is not simply one of allocation. Family offices are increasingly co-investing, holding assets through special purpose vehicles, and operating across jurisdictions. Yet many remain relatively compact organisations, creating a widening gap between institutional-style portfolios, and the infrastructure used to administer them.
Frank Anduiza, US managing director at Vistra Fund Solutions, says diversification has increased both the volume and variety of data family offices must handle.
“These assets bring different cash flows, liquidity rules, valuations, entity structures, and reporting cycles,” he informs. “Legacy systems and spreadsheets were not designed to handle differing data from such a range of sources.”
Cédric Cajet, product director at NeoXam, argues that the workload “no longer scales with headcount”.
“Each of these asset types brings its own valuation rules, its own risk indicators, data challenges, and its own accounting treatment,” he adds. “A private credit facility, a co-investment special purpose vehicle, and a real asset holding cannot be measured, or booked, the way a listed equity is.”
The single-view problem
The most visible consequence is consolidated reporting. A family office may receive data from custodians, private banks, fund administrators, general partners, and managers, while maintaining records for trusts, foundations, holding companies, and special purpose vehicles (SPVs).
The challenge is not simply collecting those records, but making them comparable.
Christiane El Habre, head of family office and regional head of Middle East at Apex Group, points out: “The core problem is that the data arrives in different formats, on different timelines, and with different definitions of value.
“Private assets are valued quarterly or semi-annually, liquid assets daily, and direct holdings often only when someone asks. Stitching that together into a single, trustworthy picture is a data-governance problem before it is a technology problem.”
Cross-border structures add another layer. El Habre notes consolidated information may also need to satisfy different regulators, tax authorities, and auditors, exposing processes originally designed only for internal family use.
Stuart Pinnington, global head of asset owners at IQ-EQ, similarly identifies fragmentation as a central obstacle. Assets may sit across several custodians and managers, each sending information through different systems, formats, and reporting timetables. Historically, he says, much of the aggregation and reconciliation has been completed manually through spreadsheets.
“The objective should be to create a single source of truth for the portfolio,” Pinnington says.
“That means collecting data from the various underlying systems, validating, and standardising it, and then presenting it consistently so the family can see its overall performance and liquidity in one place.”
The underlying data matters as much as the dashboard. Cajet warns that unless securities, counterparties, entities, and currencies are mapped into a common reference model, “aggregation produces a number nobody trusts”.
True consolidation must also provide look-through into feeder funds, fund-of-funds, and holding structures to reveal concentrations by company, sector, geography, or manager.
Research from The Family Office Association adds a qualification to the pursuit of a single system. Its 2025 paper on consolidated reporting argues a sustainable model is better understood as a comprehensive reporting system than a single platform.
With assets ranging from listed securities to property, art, and other illiquid holdings, not everything supports automatic data feeds, meaning regular reconciliation and work outside the platform can remain necessary.
Private markets change the rules
The operational strain becomes clearest in private markets. Preqin data cited by IQ-EQ show the number of family offices tracked with exposure to private markets has increased by 524 per cent since 2016. Private assets do not fit neatly into infrastructure designed around listed securities. Capital calls, distributions, commitments, waterfalls, and irregular valuations must be tracked over long lifecycles, often using documents rather than structured messages.
Belinda Aspinall, head of global family and private investment office practice, EMEA and APAC at Northern Trust, describes private asset administration as still “paper heavy with limited straight through processing”.
“While maintaining a spreadsheet for 10 direct investments was viable, once the number increases the manual element increases the associated risk,” she says.
Cajet adds that private markets “break the assumptions that public-market operating models are built on”. Family offices must monitor unfunded commitments, forecast capital calls and liquidity, verify fees, and maintain an auditable record of valuation changes, while measuring private-market performance through internal rate of return (IRR) and multiples alongside time-weighted returns for listed assets.
The capability gap is already visible. Pinnington cites BlackRock’s Global Family Office Survey, in which 57 per cent of family offices identified gaps in internal reporting expertise, rising to 75 per cent for private-market analytics.
Custody has also had to stretch beyond traditional safekeeping. Research from Northern Trust describes a global custodian’s role as including settlement, income collection, corporate actions, cash movements, accounting, and performance measurement, while also reflecting holdings and activity for non-custody assets to provide a fuller financial picture.
Rob Lowe, market head, UK, at Pictet Asset Services, states that each investment class requires some bespoke reporting. Pictet has combined reporting from its Pictet Connect platform with eFront for private assets, allowing clients to see traditional and alternatives portfolios through one reporting suite.
“Service providers often get caught somewhere between institutional and private wealth services, when the reality is that family offices now demand a blend of both,” Lowe says.
Outsourcing without surrendering control
That demand is changing the line between what sits inside the family office and what is delegated.
Anduiza says outsourcing is becoming more attractive as specialist operational requirements become difficult to maintain internally. External providers can supply technology, data controls, and processing capacity without forcing family offices to build large permanent teams.
Cajet sees capability and continuity, rather than cost alone, as key drivers. Building an internal team capable of multi-entity accounting, private-market operations, and consolidated reporting can create dependence on a small number of people.
“What they are not willing to give up is the tool itself,” he emphasises. “Most want to retain their own platform as the place where data is consolidated, controlled and owned — the processing can be delegated, but ownership of the platform and its data stay with the family.”
Lowe sees a similar distinction among larger offices, which are increasingly keeping governance-critical activities inside while outsourcing operational tasks that do not require direct internal oversight.
For Aspinall, outsourcing can become the more cost and risk-effective option where offices oversee alternatives across jurisdictions while meeting complex tax and regulatory requirements.
The model nevertheless creates a fresh oversight challenge. Adding administrators, technology providers, and specialists can reduce internal key-person dependency, but increases the importance of vendor governance, access controls, cyber security, and documented processes.
Anduiza says the greatest risks emerge “where fragmented data and manual workflows clash”. Spreadsheet-based processes can create errors and inconsistent reporting, while poorly structured data can undermine automation and AI.
“No matter how good an AI agent is, if the data it is fed is inaccurate, its outputs will be too,” he elaborates. “Key-person dependency creates additional vulnerabilities when important knowledge is held by one individual rather than embedded in systems and controls.”
The institutional family office
Institutionalisation therefore does not necessarily mean making a family office bigger or more bureaucratic. It increasingly means importing institutional controls around data, reconciliation, permissions, audit trails, and operational resilience while retaining the discretion that made the model attractive.
El Habre argues the answer is to distinguish between what should be standardised and what should remain bespoke. Legal vehicles, administration, controls, and reporting frameworks can form a repeatable institutional “structural chassis”, while the family retains flexibility over jurisdiction, asset class, governance, and objectives.
“The expectation has shifted from ‘hold my assets and send me a statement’ to ‘give me the operating platform of an institution’,” she explains.
Yet personal service remains central. Aspinall says family offices expect institutional-level support across multiple asset classes and jurisdictions because they increasingly invest alongside large institutional investors. Lowe adds that this must still be delivered through “human-first interactions” and white-glove relationship management. For asset servicers, this creates a significant client segment, but not one that can simply be squeezed into existing institutional models.
“Family offices are one of the most significant growth opportunities in asset servicing, precisely because they are institutionalizing faster than the industry has adapted to them,” says El Habre.
Anduiza agrees that convergence with institutional investing creates an opportunity, but believes that providers must accommodate family offices’ greater requirements for privacy, flexibility, and personalised service.
The emerging model is therefore neither a traditional private bank proposition nor a scaled-down asset manager. Family offices want institutional-grade custody, administration, data, and controls, but on terms that preserve family ownership of information, bespoke reporting, and direct relationships with providers.
As portfolios move deeper into private markets and across borders, the question is no longer whether operational models will change. It is whether asset servicers can help family offices institutionalise the infrastructure without institutionalising away the flexibility that made them distinctive in the first place.
Goldman Sachs’ 2025 Family Office Investment Insights survey of 245 family office decision-makers found alternatives accounted for 42 per cent of average portfolios, including 21 per cent in private equity, 11 per cent in private real estate and infrastructure, 4 per cent in private credit, and 6 per cent in hedge funds. Looking ahead, 39 per cent expected to increase private equity exposure and 26 per cent planned to increase private credit. The shift is not simply one of allocation. Family offices are increasingly co-investing, holding assets through special purpose vehicles, and operating across jurisdictions. Yet many remain relatively compact organisations, creating a widening gap between institutional-style portfolios, and the infrastructure used to administer them.
Frank Anduiza, US managing director at Vistra Fund Solutions, says diversification has increased both the volume and variety of data family offices must handle.
“These assets bring different cash flows, liquidity rules, valuations, entity structures, and reporting cycles,” he informs. “Legacy systems and spreadsheets were not designed to handle differing data from such a range of sources.”
Cédric Cajet, product director at NeoXam, argues that the workload “no longer scales with headcount”.
“Each of these asset types brings its own valuation rules, its own risk indicators, data challenges, and its own accounting treatment,” he adds. “A private credit facility, a co-investment special purpose vehicle, and a real asset holding cannot be measured, or booked, the way a listed equity is.”
The single-view problem
The most visible consequence is consolidated reporting. A family office may receive data from custodians, private banks, fund administrators, general partners, and managers, while maintaining records for trusts, foundations, holding companies, and special purpose vehicles (SPVs).
The challenge is not simply collecting those records, but making them comparable.
Christiane El Habre, head of family office and regional head of Middle East at Apex Group, points out: “The core problem is that the data arrives in different formats, on different timelines, and with different definitions of value.
“Private assets are valued quarterly or semi-annually, liquid assets daily, and direct holdings often only when someone asks. Stitching that together into a single, trustworthy picture is a data-governance problem before it is a technology problem.”
Cross-border structures add another layer. El Habre notes consolidated information may also need to satisfy different regulators, tax authorities, and auditors, exposing processes originally designed only for internal family use.
Stuart Pinnington, global head of asset owners at IQ-EQ, similarly identifies fragmentation as a central obstacle. Assets may sit across several custodians and managers, each sending information through different systems, formats, and reporting timetables. Historically, he says, much of the aggregation and reconciliation has been completed manually through spreadsheets.
“The objective should be to create a single source of truth for the portfolio,” Pinnington says.
“That means collecting data from the various underlying systems, validating, and standardising it, and then presenting it consistently so the family can see its overall performance and liquidity in one place.”
The underlying data matters as much as the dashboard. Cajet warns that unless securities, counterparties, entities, and currencies are mapped into a common reference model, “aggregation produces a number nobody trusts”.
True consolidation must also provide look-through into feeder funds, fund-of-funds, and holding structures to reveal concentrations by company, sector, geography, or manager.
Research from The Family Office Association adds a qualification to the pursuit of a single system. Its 2025 paper on consolidated reporting argues a sustainable model is better understood as a comprehensive reporting system than a single platform.
With assets ranging from listed securities to property, art, and other illiquid holdings, not everything supports automatic data feeds, meaning regular reconciliation and work outside the platform can remain necessary.
Private markets change the rules
The operational strain becomes clearest in private markets. Preqin data cited by IQ-EQ show the number of family offices tracked with exposure to private markets has increased by 524 per cent since 2016. Private assets do not fit neatly into infrastructure designed around listed securities. Capital calls, distributions, commitments, waterfalls, and irregular valuations must be tracked over long lifecycles, often using documents rather than structured messages.
Belinda Aspinall, head of global family and private investment office practice, EMEA and APAC at Northern Trust, describes private asset administration as still “paper heavy with limited straight through processing”.
“While maintaining a spreadsheet for 10 direct investments was viable, once the number increases the manual element increases the associated risk,” she says.
Cajet adds that private markets “break the assumptions that public-market operating models are built on”. Family offices must monitor unfunded commitments, forecast capital calls and liquidity, verify fees, and maintain an auditable record of valuation changes, while measuring private-market performance through internal rate of return (IRR) and multiples alongside time-weighted returns for listed assets.
The capability gap is already visible. Pinnington cites BlackRock’s Global Family Office Survey, in which 57 per cent of family offices identified gaps in internal reporting expertise, rising to 75 per cent for private-market analytics.
Custody has also had to stretch beyond traditional safekeeping. Research from Northern Trust describes a global custodian’s role as including settlement, income collection, corporate actions, cash movements, accounting, and performance measurement, while also reflecting holdings and activity for non-custody assets to provide a fuller financial picture.
Rob Lowe, market head, UK, at Pictet Asset Services, states that each investment class requires some bespoke reporting. Pictet has combined reporting from its Pictet Connect platform with eFront for private assets, allowing clients to see traditional and alternatives portfolios through one reporting suite.
“Service providers often get caught somewhere between institutional and private wealth services, when the reality is that family offices now demand a blend of both,” Lowe says.
Outsourcing without surrendering control
That demand is changing the line between what sits inside the family office and what is delegated.
Anduiza says outsourcing is becoming more attractive as specialist operational requirements become difficult to maintain internally. External providers can supply technology, data controls, and processing capacity without forcing family offices to build large permanent teams.
Cajet sees capability and continuity, rather than cost alone, as key drivers. Building an internal team capable of multi-entity accounting, private-market operations, and consolidated reporting can create dependence on a small number of people.
“What they are not willing to give up is the tool itself,” he emphasises. “Most want to retain their own platform as the place where data is consolidated, controlled and owned — the processing can be delegated, but ownership of the platform and its data stay with the family.”
Lowe sees a similar distinction among larger offices, which are increasingly keeping governance-critical activities inside while outsourcing operational tasks that do not require direct internal oversight.
For Aspinall, outsourcing can become the more cost and risk-effective option where offices oversee alternatives across jurisdictions while meeting complex tax and regulatory requirements.
The model nevertheless creates a fresh oversight challenge. Adding administrators, technology providers, and specialists can reduce internal key-person dependency, but increases the importance of vendor governance, access controls, cyber security, and documented processes.
Anduiza says the greatest risks emerge “where fragmented data and manual workflows clash”. Spreadsheet-based processes can create errors and inconsistent reporting, while poorly structured data can undermine automation and AI.
“No matter how good an AI agent is, if the data it is fed is inaccurate, its outputs will be too,” he elaborates. “Key-person dependency creates additional vulnerabilities when important knowledge is held by one individual rather than embedded in systems and controls.”
The institutional family office
Institutionalisation therefore does not necessarily mean making a family office bigger or more bureaucratic. It increasingly means importing institutional controls around data, reconciliation, permissions, audit trails, and operational resilience while retaining the discretion that made the model attractive.
El Habre argues the answer is to distinguish between what should be standardised and what should remain bespoke. Legal vehicles, administration, controls, and reporting frameworks can form a repeatable institutional “structural chassis”, while the family retains flexibility over jurisdiction, asset class, governance, and objectives.
“The expectation has shifted from ‘hold my assets and send me a statement’ to ‘give me the operating platform of an institution’,” she explains.
Yet personal service remains central. Aspinall says family offices expect institutional-level support across multiple asset classes and jurisdictions because they increasingly invest alongside large institutional investors. Lowe adds that this must still be delivered through “human-first interactions” and white-glove relationship management. For asset servicers, this creates a significant client segment, but not one that can simply be squeezed into existing institutional models.
“Family offices are one of the most significant growth opportunities in asset servicing, precisely because they are institutionalizing faster than the industry has adapted to them,” says El Habre.
Anduiza agrees that convergence with institutional investing creates an opportunity, but believes that providers must accommodate family offices’ greater requirements for privacy, flexibility, and personalised service.
The emerging model is therefore neither a traditional private bank proposition nor a scaled-down asset manager. Family offices want institutional-grade custody, administration, data, and controls, but on terms that preserve family ownership of information, bespoke reporting, and direct relationships with providers.
As portfolios move deeper into private markets and across borders, the question is no longer whether operational models will change. It is whether asset servicers can help family offices institutionalise the infrastructure without institutionalising away the flexibility that made them distinctive in the first place.
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