Family offices are adding jurisdictions, not swapping them

On 10 September 2026, TMF Group published a white paper on how wealthy families decide where to hold and administer their wealth. Building a future-ready family wealth strategy draws on the firm’s Global Business Complexity Index 2026 and on interviews with family office and private wealth professionals across four hubs: the UK and Channel Islands, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The headline number is a small one. Thirty-one per cent of family offices said the main reason they chose their jurisdiction was proximity to the markets they invest in. Political stability and economic stability were each cited by 23 per cent. These figures come from TMF Group’s own research, and the firm sells administration services in most of the places it writes about, which is worth holding in mind while reading them.

Adding, not moving

The more useful finding concerns behaviour rather than preference. TMF found that family offices are largely not abandoning their established bases. They are adding jurisdictions on top of them as operations and portfolios grow.

Tim Houghton, global head of private wealth and family offices at TMF Group, said: “Families are increasingly making strategic moves to diversify across geographies, protecting themselves against local volatility and accessing new opportunities. But this creates a new challenge: diversification can reduce concentration risk, but it also means families must manage increasingly complex regulatory, reporting and governance requirements across borders.”

That is the exchange every multi-jurisdictional family eventually makes. Fewer single points of failure, more filings.

Where the complexity sits

The Global Business Complexity Index 2026 ranks Mexico, Brazil, France and Italy among the most complex jurisdictions for doing business, and puts Hong Kong and Jersey among the least complex. TMF points to recent company and trust law changes in Jersey and Guernsey, and to Guernsey’s Family Private Investment Fund, as evidence that the islands are now competing on administrative burden.

Helen Bougourd, director of trust and corporate services at TMF Group, said the Family Private Investment Fund, “with its much lighter regulatory burden, clearly demonstrates the commitment to reducing regulatory barriers and enabling innovation”.

Two other findings are worth recording. On artificial intelligence, the paper reports that the question inside family offices has moved from whether to use it to how to use it without creating privacy, security and governance problems. On ESG, interest has cooled, though TMF expects it to recover as younger family members take a larger part in decisions.

What it means for family offices

If the leading reason for choosing a jurisdiction commands only 31 per cent, no single factor is deciding these questions any more. Stability, tax treatment, access to talent and the sheer weight of local administration are being weighed together, and the balance differs from one family to the next. A jurisdiction chosen ten years ago on one criterion may no longer be the obvious answer.

The practical cost of layering is governance load. A family that ran one structure in one place and now runs three in three has tripled its reporting calendar without necessarily adding anyone to handle it. Before a new jurisdiction is added, the questions to settle are who owns the filings, whether the existing administrator can actually cover the new location, and what the additional structure does that the current one could not. The reduction in concentration risk is real. So is the ongoing cost of running it.

Sources: TMF Group; Channel Eye; Bailiwick Express.