CNBC has partnered with Addepar, a leading data and AI platform for financial professionals, to launch the CNBC Family Office Portfolio Tracker. This new quarterly report aims to offer a transparent view into how ultra-wealthy families are allocating their substantial assets, providing insights into investment trends within this influential sector. The tracker leverages Addepar's extensive data, which encompasses the portfolios of hundreds of family offices collectively managing approximately $1.4 trillion in assets.
In its first quarterly release, the tracker highlighted the sustained and growing importance of public equities within family office portfolios. According to the CNBC Family Office Portfolio Tracker, public stocks have emerged as the largest and fastest-growing asset class for these entities, a trend that contrasts with a noticeable shrinkage in their real estate holdings.
Family offices, which function as the private investment arms for ultra-wealthy families, are increasingly significant players in global financial markets. Deloitte projects that family office wealth is expected to surpass $9 trillion by 2030, underscoring their growing influence. "Many firms across the wealth and investment ecosystem look to family offices as an important indicator of how sophisticated investors are approaching their strategic and tactical asset allocation," stated Eric Poirier, CEO of Addepar. Poirier further explained that family offices offer valuable insights into balancing risk, liquidity, performance, and diversification, especially while navigating dynamic market conditions.
"By bringing together an anonymized and aggregated view of cross-platform holdings, Addepar can help clients understand broader allocation trends and evaluate their own strategies over time," Poirier added. The tracker is designed to provide a regular update on how these entities are shifting their investments across various asset classes, including stocks, bonds, private equity, and alternatives. It will offer comparisons with previous quarters, the preceding year, and the last five years, thereby revealing both short-term and long-term investment trajectories.
This initiative is expected to serve as a valuable resource for family offices and ultra-high-net-worth investors seeking comparative benchmarks for their own portfolios. Additionally, it will benefit the rapidly expanding wealth management industry, including advisory firms and funds that actively compete for family office business. The tracker's insights are particularly relevant given that family office portfolios are often opaque due to regulatory disclosure requirements.
Data from the first quarter indicated that stocks constituted 34% of the portfolios tracked, a modest increase from 32% a year earlier. For U.S.-based family offices, a strong home bias was evident, with 80% of their equity holdings concentrated in domestic stocks, according to the review.
The broad collection of alternative assets, defined as all categories outside of publicly traded stocks and bonds, accounted for 48% of family office portfolios. Public markets, encompassing stocks and bonds, represented 52% of these portfolios. This suggests a balanced approach between public and private market investments.
Within the alternative asset category, private equity holdings dipped slightly to 6%, while private credit also saw a marginal fall to under 1%. Real estate holdings for family offices slid by nearly 2 percentage points over the past year, now accounting for 7.5% of their portfolios. Hedge funds and venture capital also experienced slight declines, standing at 6% and approximately 2%, respectively.
Investments in private companies remained substantial but flat at 16%. This indicates that many family offices either own private companies directly or are actively investing in private businesses. Holdings of cash and cash equivalents remained steady at nearly 10%. This suggests that family offices are maintaining liquidity, potentially to capitalize on future buying opportunities during market downturns or crises.
Family offices are characterized as ultimate long-term investors, planning for generations rather than focusing on individual retirement. They typically do not make drastic changes to their portfolios or react impulsively to short-term market events. However, tracking the evolution of their portfolios over time can offer clues into their perspectives on current markets and broader macroeconomic trends.
"Many of these portfolios are intentionally diversified across public and private markets and built around longer investment horizons, particularly across alternatives, so positioning often evolves more gradually over time," Poirier said. He further elaborated that the data reflects a broader evolution in family offices, noting they are operating more globally, more institutionally, and are increasingly focused on diversification, liquidity planning, and long-term strategic decision-making amidst changing market environments.
The tracker is expected to become more robust as Addepar expands its platform. Currently, more than 1,400 firms, including family offices, registered investment advisors (RIAs), wealth managers, private banks, and institutions across 60 countries, utilize Addepar to manage and advise on $9 trillion in assets. Family offices predominantly use Addepar to consolidate their diverse private and public investments onto a single platform, as a large family office can manage dozens or even hundreds of private investments, each with distinct reporting formats.
Addepar's software integrates these disparate data sources into a unified view. A growing number of banks and wealth managers are also adopting the platform to enhance synchronization with their family office clients. Recently, Addepar introduced "Addison," its native AI tool. "Addepar's view is that AI will augment — not replace — investment professionals," Poirier stated. "Increasingly, AI is helping surface actionable insights faster and reduce manual operational work, allowing teams to spend more time focused on long-term planning, strategic advice and deeper relationships with family members."
