In brief: a family office’s governance gaps are also security gaps. When succession, oversight and decision-making rest on one or two trusted individuals and on informal habit rather than documented process, the same weaknesses that expose a family’s wealth also expose its safety. Closing them is a governance task and a protective one at once.
The UBS Global Family Office Report 2026 counts more than 8,000 single family offices worldwide, managing around 5.5 trillion dollars, yet finds that only 35 per cent hold a defined succession plan. That gap is usually discussed as a wealth management problem. In our experience it is equally a security problem, because the same structures that govern capital also govern the information, people and routines that keep a family safe.
Family offices have grown at remarkable speed, up by roughly a third since 2019, and London remains among the preferred European bases. Growth of that pace tends to outrun structure. Offices that manage institutional sums are often run with the informality of a private household: decisions concentrated in one or two trusted individuals, procedures held in memory rather than in writing, and oversight of security purchased piecemeal, if at all.
The report’s findings deserve attention from anyone responsible for a family’s wellbeing, not only its balance sheet. Where governance is thin, protective arrangements are usually thinner, and the family’s exposure grows quietly while attention is fixed on the portfolio.
What does the UBS report actually reveal?
The 2026 edition surveyed 307 single family offices across more than 30 markets, with an average family net worth of 2.7 billion dollars. Three findings stand out. Only 35 per cent have a defined succession plan for the family office itself. Only 27 per cent have a structured process to prepare the next generation for their future roles. And 60 per cent plan changes to strategic asset allocation within twelve months, with geopolitical risk cited as the leading concern.
Read together, these numbers describe organisations that are institutional in scale but personal in structure. The wealth is professionally managed; the institution around it often is not. It is precisely in that space between scale and structure that security risk accumulates.
Why is a governance gap also a security gap?
A family office is the operational hub of a family’s affairs. It holds travel patterns, property details, staff records, banking instructions and the private context behind almost every decision. Where there is no defined governance, there is usually no defined owner of security: no one accountable for vetting, no standard for handling sensitive information, no rehearsed response when something goes wrong.
The consequences are rarely dramatic at first. A departing employee whose access is never formally withdrawn. A courier instruction accepted by telephone because that is how it has always been done. A contractor engaged on reputation rather than diligence. Each is a small governance failure, and each is exactly the seam a capable adversary looks for.
Where does personal risk enter the picture?
The report’s respondents name geopolitical risk as their leading concern, and they are right to. The threat picture around prominent families has hardened: state-linked activity against individuals in the United Kingdom has risen sharply year on year, and criminal groups increasingly treat advisers and family offices as the soft route to the family itself.
Personal risk follows the same logic as financial risk. It concentrates where information concentrates. An office that can move significant capital on a single instruction is also an office whose compromise endangers the principal, the family and the household staff. Treating the office’s security as an administrative afterthought inverts the real order of priority.
What does good security governance look like in a family office?
It looks unremarkable, which is rather the point. A single accountable owner for security, whether inside the office or through an external partner. Written standards for vetting staff and counterparties. Clear protocols for payments, travel and information handling. A current threat and risk assessment for the family, reviewed on a defined cycle rather than after an incident. And a tested understanding of what happens in the first hours of a problem: who is called, who decides and who speaks for the family.
None of this requires the apparatus of a corporation. It requires the same discipline the family already applies to its investments, extended to the people and information around them. Centralised accountability also removes a quiet burden from the family, because responsibility no longer rests on informal goodwill.
How does succession planning intersect with protection?
Succession is where governance and security meet most directly. A generational transition changes the pattern of life around a family: new principals, new residences, new visibility and often a period in which authority inside the office is genuinely unclear. Adversaries understand transitions as well as advisers do. The period in which only 35 per cent of offices have planned for continuity is the period in which social engineering, fraudulent instructions and insider risk are most likely to succeed.
A succession plan that considers only capital is incomplete. The protective arrangements around the next generation, their digital footprint, their households and their readiness to manage sensitive information deserve the same forward planning as the portfolio they will inherit.
What should a family office do first?
Begin with an honest assessment rather than a purchase. A structured review of the office’s exposure, the family’s threat picture and the current state of vetting, information handling and incident readiness will establish where the real gaps sit. In our experience the findings are rarely alarming and almost always actionable; the difficulty is that no one inside the office has had the mandate to look.
From that baseline, governance can be built in proportion to the family’s actual risk, integrated with any existing close protection or physical protection arrangements rather than layered awkwardly on top. We examined the operational side of this subject in an earlier article on security considerations for family offices.
Frequently asked questions
Does a smaller family office need formal security governance?
Yes, and arguably more so. Smaller offices concentrate knowledge in fewer people, so a single departure, compromise or absence removes a larger share of the office’s resilience. Proportionate governance protects continuity precisely where headcount cannot.
Is this the responsibility of the family office or the family?
Accountability should sit with the office, but the mandate must come from the family. Security governance imposed without the principal’s endorsement tends to be worked around; governance the family visibly supports becomes culture rather than compliance.
How does this relate to the geopolitical concerns in the report?
Geopolitical risk reaches families through practical channels: travel disruption, jurisdictional exposure, state-linked interest in individuals and sectors, and the targeting of advisers who hold family information. An office with defined governance can respond to these pressures in hours; an office without it improvises.
Where should succession planning and security planning connect?
At the point of transition. Any plan that changes who holds authority, where the family lives or how wealth is controlled should trigger a review of protective arrangements, information access and the next generation’s exposure, conducted before the transition rather than after it.
A confidential conversation
Valorous Group works with family offices and principals to put structure around exactly these questions: exposure assessment, security governance, vetting standards and the protective arrangements that follow from them. We are based at 78 Pall Mall, London, and a conversation is always in confidence. Speak with us in confidence.
How Valorous Group can help
Valorous Group provides discreet, integrated security and intelligence for ultra high net worth principals and families.