As per the latest “Global Family Office Report 2026” by UBS, the world’s richest families have been trimming their portfolio exposure to the US dollar due to factors like geopolitical tensions and rising sovereign debt.
The survey, conducted between January and late March of 2026, saw about two-thirds of family offices covered by the Swiss bank predicting weakening confidence in the dollar as a reserve currency over the year. However, since then, the dollar started to outperform many of its global peers.
“The dollar’s depreciation in the year before the survey was conducted has prompted many family offices to review their portfolios, with almost half concluding they are overexposed to the US currency across asset classes,” said UBS strategist Maximilian Kunkel.
“While plans to reduce exposure to dollar-denominated assets reflect a wider reconsideration of US-centric portfolios, family offices plan to add emerging market stocks and infrastructure while trimming real estate holdings,” UBS noted.
“For the first time, we are feeling that family offices want to build up in Asia Pacific and, to a certain degree, also in Western Europe. That mainly affects family offices outside the United States, but we are also seeing signs that a very limited part of the de-dollarization move is coming from U.S. family offices,” UBS executive Benjamin Cavalli said.
Among the surveyed family offices, geopolitical conflict has now emerged as the top concern by a wide margin, prompting the entities to combine asset allocation shifts with multishoring strategies. Under multishoring, family offices span their activities across jurisdictions.
While North America currently accounts for 53% of the family office portfolio allocations, as per the UBS survey, that dominance is steadily eroding, with investors now expressing growing interest in Asia-Pacific (including Greater China) and Western Europe as alternative destinations for capital deployment. In terms of asset class shifts, there has been a definitive tilt toward emerging market equities, gold, and infrastructure.