Most Asian family offices plan for their wealth to outlast the people who built it. Far fewer have prepared for what happens if one of those people is suddenly unavailable.
That gap is the central finding of the DBS Asian Family Office Almanac 2026, released on October 30 by DBS Private Bank.
DBS describes the study as two regional surveys covering hundreds of family offices, alongside in-depth interviews. The research included more than 200 family offices across Asia, Europe and the Middle East, surveyed from January to May 2026, according to The Straits Times.
Five findings stand out:
Seventy-nine percent of respondents want their wealth to last at least two generations: 37% are planning for children and grandchildren, 13% for three generations, and 29% for longer or in perpetuity.
Yet 43% have not involved the next generation in wealth planning at all, and only 21% say the next generation participates actively.
Timing is vague, too. Only 4% expect a meaningful transfer within three years, while 15% expect it to happen only after a trigger event such as death, incapacity or a crisis. When asked why planning is delayed, 33% pointed to the senior family member’s wish to stay in control.
Waiting for a crisis leaves families with less time to prepare heirs for the responsibilities they may inherit.
Nearly a quarter of families (23%) have not addressed key-person risk. Only 9% hold key-person insurance. The same share, 23%, has not planned for family conflict, while 27% have not addressed intergenerational leadership risk.
In many family offices, critical information and relationships can be concentrated with one person. That might include bank relationships, account access or knowledge of how entities and assets are structured. When that knowledge isn't documented or shared, a sudden transition can make an already difficult situation more complicated.
Our guide to building a succession plan that doesn’t depend on one person covers where to start.
This is one of the starkest findings in the report: 85% of family offices have no formal continuity plan, rely on informal arrangements, or don’t know whether a plan exists. Only 15% have a formal plan, and just 7% have one they test or review regularly.
The reasons are practical. Fifty-six percent cite a lack of in-house risk expertise, while 48% cite limited internal resources. Twenty-two percent say a lack of consolidated views across banks and custodians is part of why risks go unaddressed.
More than half of respondents (54%) hold family assets in their own names, and 52% use a personal investment company. Only 20% use a professionally administered trust. Fifty-five percent haven’t decided which new ownership structure to adopt over the next 6 to 12 months.
Assets held personally can add complexity to succession and estate administration, particularly when ownership and related information aren't clearly documented.
Fifty-eight percent are interested in investing in AI, and 60% say learning how to adopt it is their main interest. But 47% don’t use digital tools or AI analytics in daily operations. Cybersecurity and data privacy is the largest unaddressed risk in the survey, at 38%.
The barriers are familiar: about 49% cite gaps in internal expertise and about 46% cite data security concerns.
The findings point to a broader readiness gap. Succession, continuity and technology are harder to manage when financial information, institutional knowledge and key relationships aren't documented in a way the wider family or team can access.
Three practical steps follow from the report:
MYFO is a family office operating system that connects the entities, assets and liabilities, stakeholders and documents that make up a family’s financial world. For families working on the gaps DBS identified, MYFO supports:
The families in the DBS study aren't short of long-term ambition. The challenge is turning that ambition into systems and processes that can support the family through a transition, planned or otherwise.
Book a demo to see how MYFO helps families prepare for succession and continuity.
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