Every summer Citi asks a few hundred family offices how they're feeling, and every autumn we get a rather long 150-page answer. Each report has its own new insights, but how do the last three years compare? We put the 2024, 2025 and 2026 reports side by side to understand what is changing and what is staying the same.
So today it’s a look at what shifted, what didn't, and what this tells us.
One caveat up front. The respondent pool changes each year and some questions get reworded, so treat year-on-year moves as more ‘direction of travel’ rather than gospel.
Deploy, wait, build
Three years of data = three moods.
2024 was the year family offices put cash to work. After two years of hoarding it, they moved. 43% raised their exposure to public and private equity, half added to fixed income, and only 31% increased cash (down from 47% the year before). Almost everyone (97%) expected positive returns over the next 12 months, and nearly half expected double digits. The tone was confident, bordering on bullish.
2025 was the year they sat on their hands. The survey landed just weeks after the April tariff shock, and Citi's own summary was essentially "stay the course". Half of respondents left their bond allocations alone and two-thirds didn't touch real estate. Sentiment was neutral across every single asset class, including equities. Plenty acted after the sell-off, but mostly through active management and hedging rather than selling. Nobody wanted to make a big call until the policy noise settled.
2026 is the year they started building. Citi's headline for this year is three words: capital, capability, continuity. The net share of offices adding to public equities jumped from 11% to 34%. Nearly nine in ten were up year-to-date, and 13% were up more than 15%. But the more interesting shift is where the energy's going beyond the portfolio: governance, technology, succession, the next generation. Professionalization is kicking in.
The worry changes. The worrying doesn't.
This is the clearest pattern across all three years. The top concern aligns almost perfectly with the news cycle.
In 2024 it was interest rates (52%), while inflation dropped out of the top spot for the first time since 2021. In 2025 it was trade wars (60%), with rates sliding to fourth. In 2026 it's inflation, cited by 63%, while tariff worries have collapsed to 18%.
“Short- duration income assets, quality exposures and inflation- sensitive diversifiers will play a more important role in preserving real wealth in the years ahead.” - Citi Global Family Office Report 2026
Geopolitics follows the same script. Concern about the Middle East fell from 25% to 14% as investors got used to it, then leapt back to 32% this year after the latest escalation and the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz. The Russia-Ukraine war has faded from 16% to 4%. US-China tension, a fixture at the top of the list in 2024 and 2025, has halved to 22%.
One to watch: concern about the stability of the global financial system has crept up from around 30% to 38%.
The headline worry is almost always whatever just hit the front pages, but more revealing is how little family office behavior actually changed in response.
What they did about it: not much, and on purpose
After the 2025 tariff sell-off, the most common response was active management (39%), followed by tilting towards defensive asset classes (25%) and hedging (14%). After this year's Middle East correction, the single biggest answer was "nothing at all" (41%), then active management (34%) and hedging (27%).
The regional split is striking. In North America, 60% made no changes. In Asia Pacific, only 13% sat still, and nearly half hedged. Same shock, very different instincts.
And the pain threshold... Around 72% of offices say they need a drawdown of 11% or more before they'd even reassess strategy. That’s a deliberate strategy not to be spooked.
Target returns have calmed down. In 2024, almost half expected double-digit gains. In 2025, it was nearly four in ten. This year Citi asked about targets rather than expectations: 41% aim for 7-10% a year, and only 11% target above 15%. Founders still swing harder (19% of first-generation offices target 15%+, versus 4% of third-generation ones), but the overall tone has moved from "how much can we make?" to "how much can we keep?". With inflation back as the top worry, family offices want to preserve purchasing power.
Inside the portfolio, the 2025-to-2026 comparison shows movement. The net share adding to public equity rose 23 points and cash rose 14. Private equity, fixed income and real estate all cooled, with fixed income flipping to net selling. Private credit, the darling of a couple of years ago, is now more likely to be cut than added, as defaults climb.
AI: from paradox to plumbing
Hardly a surprise, but no theme has moved faster. In 2024, half of family offices had AI exposure in their portfolios, but about only one in ten was using generative AI in their own operations. Citi called it a paradox.
By 2025, deployment had nearly doubled, mainly in automating operational tasks and investment analysis (22% each). The big barrier was a lack of in-house expertise, cited by 57%.
“The greatest benefits will accrue to family offices that treat AI as an organizational capability rather than a stand-alone initiative.” - Citi Global Family Office Report 2026
This year, around four in five offices are using AI in some form. But 40% describe themselves as early adopters running pilots, only 10% are "advanced", and just 2% say AI is central to decision-making. The most common use case is AI-written meeting notes.
Using AI for alpha generation? Only 4% do it extensively. And a quarter say they've seen no measurable impact yet.
So the tone has shifted from "should we?" to "where does it save us time?". Productivity first, returns maybe later, with humans still making the final call. Meanwhile, AI has become the top destination for new direct investment capital, picked by 51% of respondents. The reality is that family offices are still much keener to own AI than to run on it.
Professionalization keeps grinding forward
Between 2025 and 2026, the share of offices with an investment committee rose from 53% to 63%. Formal investment policy statements went from 45% to 55%. Robust due diligence processes rose from 54% to 60%.
But something’s lagging... Only 49% have a formal risk management framework, and 47% use proper consolidated reporting software. And the teams are still tiny. In both 2025 and 2026, around 62-63% of offices ran on six staff or fewer.
That tension between institutional ambition and boutique headcount has been in all three reports. It's also why outsourcing keeps growing, especially for tax, estate planning and reporting, whereas investment decisions stay firmly in-house.
What’s out of fashion
Sustainable investing is the theme that's faded fastest.
In 2024, 38% of offices had zero sustainable allocation. This year, 51% have no sustainable allocation at all, and only 7% list a sustainable investing program as a strategic priority.
Values seem to have replaced this as a theme. 55% say the family's mission strongly shapes how they invest. ESG as a label is out. Investing in line with what the family actually cares about is in.
Digital assets are the other non-story. Nearly half now say there are no real barriers to investing more, yet just 3% plan to increase their allocation and 14% plan to cut. Access isn't the issue anymore. Appetite is.
What moved up: the family itself
The biggest narrative shift across the three reports: the role of the family itself.
In 2024, family offices said their top challenge was meeting family members' expectations (54%), which for the first time beat adapting to markets. In 2025, 58% admitted next-generation preparation was a gap between what they offered and what principals wanted. In 2026, next-gen education is the second-highest strategic priority (36%), just behind technology, with family unity, direct investing and succession planning close behind.
The tone on succession has flipped. In 2024, over two-thirds said they felt well prepared for a leadership transition. This year, only 17% say they're well prepared and 34% "somewhat". The questions aren't identical, so don't over-read the numbers, but the mood has clearly shifted from reassurance to urgency.
The top barriers to developing future leaders are unclear roles (46%), a lack of urgency in the family (42%) and next-gen disengagement (39%). Only 9% blame a lack of educational resources.
“Building cross-border expertise will be essential as rising global complexity becomes a foundational aspect of family wealth.” - Citi Global Family Office Report 2026
38% are expecting the family to become more international and 59% are flagging cross-border tax coordination as a key need.
Citi now describes the family office as a coordinating institution rather than an investment shop.
What stayed the same
For all that movement, some things haven't budged in three years:
51% of families are controlled by the first generation, every single year
Asset preservation remains the families' number one concern
Around three in four offices invest directly, and growth-stage deals remain the favorite
Public equities anchor the portfolio, now around 30% of assets
Optimism is a constant. Every year, the overwhelming majority expect gains, and so far they've been right
And in a shock, nobody sells everything !
Final thoughts
Three years of Citi data tell us something the individual reports don't: the rhetoric moves much faster than the portfolios.
Worries rotate with the headlines, asset class enthusiasm swings at the margin, but the core behavior, staying invested, refusing to panic, keeping decisions in the family, has been rock solid through a rate scare, a trade war and a Middle East shock.
What’s changed is where the effort is going.
Three years ago the conversation was about what to buy. Today it's about who'll be running the place in ten years, whether they'll want to, and whether a family office has the systems to hand it over properly.
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