The Wharton Global Family Alliance recently released the 2024 Executive Summary of The Wharton Family Office Survey, shedding light on family offices’ involvement in philanthropy and ESG initiatives, as well as on how they manage assets and approach information technology, among other topics.
Among its findings:
- Philanthropy: 32% of respondents said the family office manages the family’s philanthropic activities
- Technology: Half of family offices have an IT disaster recovery plan in place.
- Staffing: On average, family offices employ 0.5 FTE IT professionals.
- ESG investments: 35% of respondents either make ESG investments or plan to. The top approaches are thematic investing (such as clean energy); integrating ESG factors into the analysis of investments; and exclusion-based screening (such as not investing in tobacco companies).
- Asset allocation trends: The top three asset classes for family office investments are public equity, private equity and real estate. Real estate and direct investments are likely to be managed in house, but other asset classes are usually outsourced to specialist managers.
