Regulators and industry players in Hong Kong are ramping up efforts to meet the evolving needs of family offices, which are becoming increasingly sophisticated amid a growing focus on private markets and geographic diversification.
Hong Kong, which aspires to become a global family office hub, is shaping new policies to adapt to emerging industry trends and attract more global family offices.
As the city’s regulatory environment becomes more favourable, industry players such as Raffles Family Office (RFO) are also expanding their product offerings across emerging markets to capitalise on the market’s diversification needs.
“There is a growing focus on private markets, with family offices increasingly allocating capital to private equity, co-investments, and also direct investments in companies, moving away from purely passive public market investments and adopting fund structures to centralise asset management, achieve scale, and facilitate succession planning,” Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Christopher Hui, said on “a few defining trends” in the family office industry at the latest RFO annual forum in Hong Kong.
The forum also featured Yusuf Murangwa, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning of the Republic of Rwanda, among its speakers.
Family offices are “adopting institutional-style governance” to ensure efficiency and “expanding globally” with customised solutions across real estate planning, insurance, and technology adoption to meet their evolving mission around preserving wealth, fostering values, and driving positive impact across generations, said Hui.
“The government is steadfast in its commitment to positioning our city as the premier hub for family offices in Asia and beyond,” said Hui, highlighting the latest progress in Hong Kong’s efforts in attracting global family offices.
As of September 2025, Hong Kong boasts over 2,700 single family offices in total. The government has achieved its previous target, as outlined in the 2022 Policy Address, of facilitating at least 200 family offices to establish a presence in the city.
Moving forward, the government aims to bring in an additional 220 family offices between 2026 and 2028, as announced in its policy address last month, Hui stressed.
“All these three trends that I mentioned—professional governance, diversification into private assets, and global operations sophistication—position family offices well to thrive in an era of rapid technological disruption, evolving economic paradigms, and growing societal expectations,” said Hui.
New hub of wealth creation
While North America still holds the largest share of the world’s high-net-worth population, Asia Pacific (APAC) has been the primary engine of new wealth creation for years.
The number of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in APAC is estimated to have grown 5% year on year to 855,000 in 2024, with growth in China and India expected to bring the region’s share of new HNWIs globally to a projected 47.5% between 2025 and 2028, according to Swiss bank Julius Baer’s Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report 2025 released in July.
Concurrently, the intergenerational wealth transfer in APAC should see $5.8 trillion in assets change hands between 2023 and 2030, the report projected. This is expected to accelerate a shift towards new preferences, such as a growing focus on sustainability and increased digitalisation.
As the family office landscape evolves, industry players like RFO have laid out plans for expanding into emerging markets and exploring potentially higher growth opportunities for wealthy clients from APAC.
“Asia’s expanding wealth landscape is redefining what it means to manage and preserve legacy,” said RFO’s group CEO, Chi Man Kwan. “The way the next generation manages their wealth will be 180 degrees different from how it is done today… Families are not just thinking about wealth creation. They are thinking about family mobility, risk management, succession, but more importantly, how to make a meaningful impact.”
A multifamily office founded in 2016 and dual headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore, RFO is expanding its presence in the Middle East, including with the appointment of Abdullatif Mohamed Kanoo, a member of The Kanoo Group, as a new board adviser in December 2024.
RFO is also pursuing acquisitions in the UAE to broaden beyond asset management, said Kwan, without disclosing further details about the targets.
Moreover, the Asian multifamily office has become the first family office to entre Rwanda, with a plan to host its first family office symposium in the country in 2026, said Kwan.
The firm recently bolstered its relationship management team in Hong Kong, with the appointment of Michael Tung as managing director and Jennie Liang as executive director to enhance its ability in serving ultra-wealthy clients across APAC.
Murangwa, the Rwandan minister who was also present at the forum, said that his country, being centrally located in Africa, offers Hong Kong and global investors easy access to many fast-growing economies on the continent.
The Rwandan government targets to boost its non-traditional, high-growth industries including finance, event & hospitality, sports, technology, logistics, and high-end, high-value manufacturing, said Murangwa. “We want to go big-time in finance because finance and capital facilitation is the catalyst for all other industries.”
