A Foot in Both Worlds: Why Family Offices Are Expanding Across the Globe

Geographically dispersed families, increasingly sophisticated portfolios, and shifting regulatory and tax regimes are driving a significant trend: family offices are multiplying their footprints across jurisdictions.

December 18, 2025 —

Families are establishing multiple family offices to better serve a globally distributed family base, manage political, legal, and regulatory risk, and unlock access to new markets, talent, and investment opportunities—including GPs, sponsors, fund managers, and peer families.

According to Ocorian, 78% of family offices have opened offices in new jurisdictions over the past five years, largely as family members relocate internationally. Additional drivers include portfolio diversification and complexity (57%), geopolitical risk (41%), tax efficiency (40%), and staffing shortages (11%).

Whether prompted by personal family considerations or an increasingly uncertain macroeconomic environment, family offices are expanding geographically—creating both opportunity and complexity for principals, family members, and professional managers alike.

Reward Without the Risk

The co-location trend allows family offices to access global professional services and talent while operating within stable economic and political environments with the benefits of a favorable tax regime.

Wealth owners can often take advantage of jurisdictions actively seeking to attract family offices—while still maintaining legacy businesses and the majority of their assets in their home country. This has fueled the rise of global family office hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UAE.

The trend is equally evident within the United States. Many families are deliberate in choosing the state in which they have offices to benefit from access to talent and favorable tax jurisdictions. A “mothership” office may be based in a smaller regional city, while investment teams are positioned in markets like New York, Miami, or Dallas to better source opportunities and connect with other enterprising families.

While this expansion often increases operational complexity, it can also deliver meaningful cost efficiencies. Compensation ranges for executive and back-office talent vary dramatically by geography, allowing families to build strong teams while managing long-term overhead thoughtfully.

Cross-Border Wealth Management: Key Considerations

Establishing a new family office presence requires careful evaluation of regulatory frameworks, legal structures, and tax regimes. Reputation, immigration policies, investment visa requirements, and the broader political landscape must also be considered.

Equally critical are cybersecurity and enterprise-level risk management. Family offices must ensure consistent controls, secure data environments, and integrated technology platforms across all jurisdictions.

Importantly, opening a new office is not a one-time event—it is a phased process that touches every dimension of family capital, not just financial wealth. Advisors and staff must operate in a coordinated, integrated manner, implementing changes systematically while maintaining compliance and alignment.

Throughout the process, families must remain attentive to lifestyle considerations as well, including education, healthcare, social networks, travel, and time-zone alignment—all of which can materially affect family cohesion and long-term satisfaction.

A Widening Talent Pool

Family office talent remains one of the most constrained areas of the ecosystem. Professionals must combine technical excellence with emotional intelligence, discretion, cultural alignment, and the ability to think independently in service of both financial and socio-emotional wealth.

While we often focus on the factors tightening the family office talent market, co-location is one of the few trends that actively expands it—opening families to a global horizon of highly qualified professionals.

As families expand geographically, their investment ambitions and operational expectations grow in parallel. Increasingly, families recognize that the physical location of their offices has a direct impact on recruitment success, reputation, and internal harmony.

At Mack, we specialize in finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. For a conversation about building or expanding your family office team, we welcome the opportunity to connect.