Family offices say they are the most patient capital in the market. This year’s North America Family Office Report suggests they are right, just not by as much as they think.
Somewhere in the United States, a family office serves more than 100 households. It began when two brothers left Europe before the Second World War, and that move was, in effect, the family’s liquidity event. The man who runs it today is fourth generation. He joined in 1988. His father joined in 1957, is now 95, and still comes into the office.
It is hard to imagine a better picture of patient capital. Yet when he describes what keeps him up at night, it is not markets. It is whether he can keep serving a growing, scattered family without the costs running away, and who will replace the people who have run his office for decades.
His story is one of five interviews in The North America Family Office Report 2026, published by Campden Wealth with RBC and based on a survey of 155 single-family and private multi-family offices. Read together, the numbers and the interviews describe a group with more conviction than last year, more pressure on liquidity than they would like, and a widening gap between the patience they believe in and the way they actually invest.
From too cautious to very confident in twelve months
A year ago, these offices expected an average return of about 5%, and roughly one in seven expected to lose money. The year turned out far better. Every asset class the survey tracks finished 2025 with a positive median return, and the report estimates the average portfolio made around 13%.
Having been too cautious, families have now swung the other way. 84% expect direct private equity to match or beat 2025 over the next two to five years, and three-quarters say the same of private equity funds.
The most telling contradiction is about AI. Three-quarters of offices expect an AI investment bubble to burst within five years, and more than half think AI returns will disappoint. Almost none plan to reduce their exposure. The report’s authors put it gently: even patient capital can catch the fear of missing out.
The patience gap
One of the report’s interviewees, a professional head of a family office who is not a family member, was asked whether offices really use their long horizon. His answer was that there is “absolutely a gap.” Family offices are more patient than the average investor, he said, but less patient than they tell themselves.
His picture of a well-built portfolio has three layers. The first produces the cash the family needs every year, for living costs, taxes and commitments. The second funds growth for the current generation. The third is the truly long-horizon money, the purest form of patient capital. When a portfolio is stacked this way, he argues, each investment has a clear job.
The gap opens in predictable places. A child’s friends start a company that looks exciting, and the family backs it to support the child rather than asking them to pitch it properly against the investment policy. Or a deal arrives through a casual conversation on the airport tarmac or at the dock, where the fear of missing out does its best work. Neither is a market event. Both pull money away from the plan.
Liquidity, the word of the year
If one word ran through every interview, the report says, it was liquidity.
The numbers back it up. Only a small group of offices tried to sell out of a fund position this year, and nearly half of them could not complete the exit as planned. Half ran into caps or restrictions. Two-thirds of all respondents expect a high-profile private credit event in 2026.
One interviewee, the head of a first-generation office, explained why his family stopped investing in funds altogether. Its last fund commitment was in 2015. Since then it has lived through gated redemptions, changes of management and fund life extensions, each of which broke the family’s forecast of when cash would come back. Today the office only invests directly, and only where the family can add expertise, usually with a seat on the board. Even that does not make liquidity easy. What keeps him up at night, he said, is a deal the family has committed to that now wants its money, while a loan repayment the office was counting on has not yet arrived. He is not alone in moving direct. Direct investments now make up 45% of the average family office’s private markets book, ahead of funds at 36%. A year ago it was the other way round.
Mousse Partners is a family office that is keen on direct investments. Mousse Partness is the famliy office for Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, the billionaire brothers who own the luxury fashion house Chanel.
In venture, choosing is everything
According to Octum research, family offices continue to deploy capital directly to growth stage and pre-IPO investments, despite the risks. Growth equity is often preferred for some smaller family offices versus early-stage venture. Larger family offices are willing to take a gamble on more earlier stages of VC world. The sharpest views in the RBC report come from a technology investor who runs his own family office. He made his first SpaceX investment 14 years ago and did not push for an exit.
His case against most family offices’ venture programs is simple. Venture has the widest spread of results of any asset class: the best funds return spectacularly, and many lose money. That makes picking a venture fund almost as hard as picking a startup. If an office can’t pick startups well, he argues, it can’t pick venture funds well either. He goes further. Spreading money across many venture funds, a common way to manage risk, mostly guarantees average results, and average venture returns can trail a simple stock index while locking money up for a decade. His advice to families trying to make their wealth last is blunt: stop paying underperforming funds. Some family offices are cautious on venture capital funds, especially ones with limited track records. Family office investors like Toba Capital invest in venture capital funds.
Octum also discovered that many VC funds are being funded by other founders, thus creating a back and forth in moving money, to draw in additional capital.
AI everywhere, except where it hurts most
Family offices have taken to AI quickly like PremjiInvest. Just over half now use it to research text, news and transcripts, and about a third use it for investment reporting, internal knowledge and choosing managers. Many more want to: 45% would like to use it for risk management.
Yet the oldest complaint has not gone away. 73% say investment reporting is still too manual, for the third year running, and the median office spends just $100,000 a year on IT. Offices are also split, 43% to 35%, on whether they would pay for enterprise-grade AI. Citigroup’s 2026 Global Family Office Reports described a sentiment on family offices moving to broader usage of AI.
The biggest change is in what worries them. Cybersecurity jumped from near the bottom of the list to the top operational concern, cited by 59% of offices, up from 16% a year ago. 59% saw phishing attempts this year, and a quarter had a family member’s personal accounts breached. At the same time, fewer offices reported basic protections such as two-factor authentication. For offices handing more of their research to software, where their data goes is quickly becoming the first question to ask.
What this means if you work with family offices
For fund managers, founders and advisers who raise money from family offices, the report reads like a set of instructions.
- Lead with liquidity, honestly. Families have been burned by gates and extensions. Be clear about exit timelines and what could delay them. Candor about the downside is now part of how quality is judged.
- Show where you fit in the plan. If an office stacks its portfolio into near-term cash, current growth and long-horizon capital, tell them which layer you belong in and why.
- Bring direct and co-investment options. With direct deals now the larger share of private markets books, a fund that offers co-investment, or a deal that lets the family add expertise, starts ahead.
- Know the family, not just the office. 71% of offices set strategy in-house, and 47% involve the family in every investment decision. The people who decide are often family members, and their backgrounds shape what they will back.
- Treat their data as carefully as their money. Cybersecurity is now their top operational worry. How you handle what they share with you is part of your pitch.
Most of this comes down to knowing the people on the other side before the first meeting: who decides, what they care about, and where an opportunity fits in their plan. That is the work Ora, Octum’s research analyst, is built to do.
Figures and interviews in this article come from The North America Family Office Report 2026, produced by Campden Wealth with RBC and based on 155 family offices across the Americas. Interviewees in the report are anonymous, and their views are their own.
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