​​​​​​​At the Hubbis Wealth Planning & Structuring Forum – Singapore 2026, industry leaders examined how private wealth planning in Asia is moving beyond structures alone. The discussion explored how families are reassessing where they live, where they hold assets, where they educate the next generation, which jurisdictions they trust, and which advisers can genuinely understand the full picture across family, business, assets, succession, and control.

The panel highlighted a market that is becoming more sophisticated, more selective, and more demanding. Singapore remains a leading wealth hub, supported by stability, governance, connectivity, education, safety, and its position within one of the world’s fastest-growing wealth regions. However, families now have more options, higher expectations, and more complex needs. The advisory challenge is no longer simply to establish the right structure, but to help families make better long-term decisions around jurisdiction, governance, intergenerational transition, business continuity, family office models, and strategic wealth preservation.

Chair: Dominic Volek, Group Head of Private Clients and Member of the Executive Committee, Henley & Partners

Panellists


Kendrick Lee, CEO, Singapore and Co-Founder, Raffles Family Office
Zac Lucas, Partner – International Private Wealth, Spencer West LLP
Alice Tan, Head of Group Wealth Management, Maybank

 

Key Takeaways


Singapore remains strongly positioned as a private wealth hub, particularly as global uncertainty reinforces the appeal of stable, well-governed, and internationally connected jurisdictions.
Asia-Pacific and ASEAN wealth creation continue to support regional opportunity, with growth visible across both high net worth and ultra-high net worth segments.
The new client map includes both old wealth and new entrepreneurial wealth, with many founders building across markets and approaching wealth with more regional and global ambition.
Clients are more globally educated, digitally fluent, and sophisticated, pushing advisers to move beyond product access towards holistic advice across business, family, personal wealth, and succession.
Next-generation family members are entering wealth conversations earlier, as families recognise that late exposure can create significant transition risk.
The main intergenerational disconnect often lies in investment philosophy, with founders more anchored in traditional businesses and assets, while younger family members may be more comfortable with private markets, technology, and digital assets.
Succession planning is becoming a strategic exercise, not merely a trust or estate planning exercise, as families consider whether they remain operating business families or evolve into diversified financial families.
Singapore’s family office market has matured, with higher barriers to entry, longer setup timelines, greater compliance expectations, and a clearer emphasis on substance.
Multi-family offices are becoming increasingly relevant for families that need access, advice, governance support, and investment opportunities but cannot justify the full cost of a single-family office.
AI may improve documentation, research, onboarding, AML, compliance, and operations, but judgement, accountability, fiduciary responsibility, and family-level discretion remain human functions.
The next phase of wealth planning in Asia will reward substance, early engagement, sound governance, jurisdictional clarity, and advisers who can connect technical structuring with real family priorities.

 

Singapore’s Client Map Is Becoming More Regional and More Sophisticated

Panellists agreed that Singapore continues to benefit from its position as a trusted financial centre in a period of global uncertainty. Political unrest, policy volatility, and geopolitical fragmentation have made stability more valuable to families deciding where to locate assets, people, and decision-making structures.

Singapore’s advantage is also reinforced by its location within a fast-growing region. The discussion pointed to continued wealth creation across Asia-Pacific and ASEAN, including strong growth in high net worth and ultra-high net worth wealth. Panellists cited particularly strong five-year growth in markets such as the Philippines and Indonesia, underlining the importance of Singapore’s role as a regional wealth platform rather than only a domestic financial centre.

The profile of clients is also changing. Alongside old wealth, the region is seeing more new entrepreneurial wealth from founders who are building businesses across multiple sectors and jurisdictions. These clients are often globally educated, technologically fluent, and more sophisticated in the way they think about capital, investment access, structuring, and family mobility.

This changes the role of advisers. Clients are no longer simply asking for access to products. They increasingly want advice that connects their business interests, personal wealth, family priorities, risk appetite, jurisdictional needs, and long-term objectives.

“Access alone is no longer enough,” said a panellist. “The client wants someone who can understand the business, the family, and the personal wealth together.”

Despite this shift, the panel stressed that wealth management remains a relationship-led business. Personalised advice, trust, confidentiality, and continuity continue to matter deeply. Technology may support the adviser, but it does not replace the need for judgement or family understanding.

Families Are Bringing the Next Generation In Earlier

Intergenerational wealth transfer was identified as one of the defining issues in Asian private wealth. Panellists observed that more families are involving younger family members earlier than they did a decade ago.

In the past, some founders avoided exposing children to wealth too soon, often out of concern that it might create complacency or weaken ambition. That attitude is changing. Families increasingly recognise that leaving the next generation outside the conversation until a crisis or succession event can be dangerous. Sudden responsibility without preparation can leave younger family members ill-equipped to manage assets, advisers, structures, and family expectations.

The panel noted that some families now bring the next generation into family office environments through internships, holiday placements, observation, and structured financial education. This allows younger family members to understand not only investment returns, but also preservation, governance, reporting, structures, risk management, and the responsibilities attached to wealth.

“The concern used to be that early exposure would make the next generation complacent,” said a panellist. “Now families are realising that no exposure can be the bigger risk.”

This does not mean handing over control prematurely. Rather, it means giving younger family members a pathway to learn, participate, and gradually assume responsibility. Families that delay the conversation until the founder is elderly, incapacitated, or no longer able to lead the transition may find that the window for proper preparation has already closed.

Investment Philosophy Is a Key Generational Divide

The panel also explored where founders and the next generation most often disconnect. One of the clearest areas is investment philosophy.

Many first-generation wealth creators built their fortunes through traditional businesses, real estate, operating control, and familiar asset classes. Their instincts were formed through direct ownership, tangible assets, and long-term business building. Younger family members may view opportunity differently. They are often more exposed to private equity, venture capital, digital assets, technology businesses, and global investment themes.

Panellists cautioned against treating either perspective as inherently superior. The founder’s discipline often reflects the experience that created the wealth. The next generation’s approach may reflect a more current understanding of innovation, technology, and emerging sources of return. The adviser’s role is to translate this tension into a structured allocation conversation rather than allowing it to become a values-based dispute.

“The two generations may both be right, but they are often speaking from different experiences,” said a panellist. “The practical question is how that becomes asset allocation, not argument.”

This is where governance, investment policy, and education become useful. Families need agreed frameworks for risk, liquidity, concentration, alternatives, private assets, digital assets, and decision rights. Without that structure, investment differences can quickly become family conflict.

Succession Planning Is Moving Upstream

From a legal and structuring perspective, panellists noted that succession planning is no longer simply a trust or estate planning exercise. The more important conversation often happens upstream, before any structure is chosen.

For many Asian families, the majority of wealth remains tied up in operating businesses. This creates a strategic question: will the family remain a business family, or will it gradually become a financial family? If the next generation is not willing or able to run the business, the family must consider whether to professionalise management, diversify assets, create liquidity, build a family office, or rethink ownership and control.

That question should shape the structure, not the other way around. A trust, private trust company, foundation, family office, or other vehicle may be useful, but only if it reflects the family’s real direction of travel.

“Before discussing the structure, the family has to ask where the wealth is actually going,” said a panellist.

Private trust companies were identified as one area of increasing interest, particularly among larger, multi-branch, multi-generation families. These structures can support representative decision-making, transparency, governance rules, and dispute prevention. However, the panel cautioned that they require genuine substance and engagement. They should not be used merely as a mechanism for retaining control while appearing to delegate it.

The broader point was clear: sophisticated structures are valuable only when families have the intention, governance maturity, and advisory support to operate them properly.

The Biggest Mistake Is Still Waiting Too Long

Despite growing sophistication, panellists agreed that many families still leave planning too late. Founders may understand the risks, accept the logic of best practice, and still fail to act. The reasons are often emotional rather than technical. Planning can require difficult conversations about mortality, control, business succession, family conflict, capacity, and whether the next generation is ready.

The consequences can be severe. If planning begins only when the founder is elderly or losing capacity, advisers may face difficult legal and practical questions. Surviving spouses may be unprepared. Children may begin competing for influence. Structures may be rushed, contested, or avoided altogether.

“The sad cases are rarely caused by a lack of intelligence,” said a panellist. “They happen because everyone knew the issue was there, but no one moved early enough.”

The panel also placed responsibility on the second generation. Succession is not only the founder’s problem. If younger family members wait passively for decisions to be made, they may inherit not only wealth, but also unresolved governance, business, and family tensions.

Singapore’s Family Office Market Has Become More Selective

The discussion then turned to Singapore’s family office market. Panellists noted that the market has changed significantly over the past decade. Earlier conversations often focused on education, as families were still learning what a family office was and how it could support preservation, succession, structuring, investment management, and control.

Today, awareness is much higher. Singapore has built a strong family office ecosystem, but the market is also more selective. Setup timelines are longer, compliance expectations are higher, and costs have increased. The process is no longer as quick or straightforward as it may once have been.

Panellists did not present this as a sign of weakness. Rather, it reflects a more mature market. Singapore is increasingly focused on attracting family offices with appropriate scale, substance, governance, and contribution to the broader ecosystem.

“The question is no longer whether Singapore can attract family offices,” said a panellist. “The question is which families genuinely fit the platform.”

For many ultra-high net worth families, Singapore remains compelling despite the higher burden. Governance, policy continuity, stability, safety, education, infrastructure, and global connectivity continue to carry significant weight. Families that want a trusted base for both capital and family life may still view Singapore as a premium jurisdiction.

However, the panel warned that Singapore cannot be complacent. Other jurisdictions are competing more actively for private wealth and family office flows. Singapore must therefore preserve its credibility without becoming so restrictive that high-quality families choose more agile alternatives.

Multi-Family Offices Have a Larger Role to Play

The panel also discussed how advisers should frame Singapore for families that cannot justify a full single-family office. For families able to commit very substantial capital, a single-family office may make sense. Below that level, the fixed costs of staffing, governance, compliance, reporting, investment access, and administration can become difficult to sustain.

Multi-family offices can help fill that gap. They can provide access to investment opportunities, private markets, reporting, advisory support, governance frameworks, and structuring guidance without requiring each family to build a standalone institution.

This is particularly important as Singapore becomes more selective. Advisers need to help families distinguish between what is desirable, what is possible, and what is proportionate. Not every family needs its own family office, and not every structure is justified by the family’s scale or complexity.

“Not every family needs to build the full infrastructure themselves,” said a panellist. “For some families, the better answer is the right platform rather than their own institution.”

The key is suitability. Families need models that match their assets, objectives, cost tolerance, jurisdictional needs, and governance maturity.

AI Will Improve Process, But Human Accountability Remains Essential

AI was addressed as an important but bounded theme. Panellists noted that clients are already arriving with AI-generated analysis, including reviews of legal documents and trust deeds. This is likely to make clients more informed and may increase pressure on advisers to respond quickly and precisely.

In legal and fiduciary work, AI may help with research, drafting, document review, issue spotting, and analysis. In operations, it may produce meaningful efficiency gains across onboarding, AML, compliance, reporting, and workflow management. These are areas where private wealth has become more complex and more burdensome.

However, the panel stressed that AI does not remove professional responsibility. Legal advice, fiduciary judgement, family discretion, and final sign-off still require accountable human advisers and institutions.

“AI can produce an answer, but it does not carry the responsibility for that answer,” said a panellist.

The near-term opportunity is therefore practical rather than dramatic. AI may help reduce friction, improve speed, and support better infrastructure, particularly in compliance and operations. But in high-value family wealth planning, trust, judgement, accountability, and context remain central.

The Next Phase Will Reward Substance, Timing, and Trust

In closing, the panel made clear that wealth planning in Asia is entering a more demanding stage. Singapore remains a leading platform, but families now have more choices and more complex expectations. Structures still matter, but they are no longer sufficient on their own.

The families best positioned for the next phase will be those that start early, involve the next generation thoughtfully, confront business succession honestly, and choose structures that reflect real needs rather than fashion or control. The advisers best positioned will be those who can connect technical expertise with family understanding, business context, governance discipline, and jurisdictional clarity.

Singapore’s opportunity remains significant. Its strengths in governance, stability, connectivity, infrastructure, and ecosystem depth continue to make it one of the most important centres for Asian private wealth. But the market must continue to balance competitiveness with credibility, innovation with governance, and selectivity with accessibility.

The direction of travel is clear. Wealth planning is moving beyond the structure. The next phase will be shaped by families and advisers who treat planning not as a one-off technical exercise, but as an ongoing discipline of education, governance, transition, and trust.