At the Hubbis India Wealth Management Forum 2026, the second panel discussion examined how succession and wealth structuring are evolving as Indian families become increasingly international. The conversation explored the implications of cross-border mobility, jurisdictional diversification, externalised wealth, changing family dynamics and the growing need to connect legal structures with effective governance.
The panel highlighted an environment in which few families can rely on a single jurisdiction or solution. Assets, businesses and family members may now be spread across several markets, exposing families to different regulatory, tax and succession regimes. Against that backdrop, advisers must increasingly begin with the family’s objectives and circumstances, then determine which combination of structures, jurisdictions and specialists can support those needs over time.
Chair: Vaanyasri Goel, Chief Investment Strategist, PACE Family Office
Panellists
- Zeherra Mecklai, CEO and Founder, Mecklai Wealth’s
- Priyanshu Gaurav, Senior Executive Director, Nuvama Private
- Munish Randev, Founder & CEO, Cervin Family Office
- Himanshu Kohli, Co-Founder, Client Associates
- Thomas Stephen, Director & Head – Anand Rathi Preferred, Anand Rathi Share & Stock Brokers Ltd. (ARSSBL)
Key Takeaways
- Wealthy Indian families are becoming more geographically dispersed, with assets, businesses and family members increasingly spread across multiple jurisdictions.
- Geopolitical uncertainty is strengthening interest in diversification and contingency planning rather than necessarily prompting wholesale relocation.
- Offshore wealth accumulated over time is creating a new generation of succession questions as owners and beneficiaries establish residence in different markets.
- Traditional structures such as trusts, foundations, holding companies and insurance remain relevant, but increasingly need to work together within a broader and more flexible framework.
- Advisers should begin with family objectives rather than individual products or vehicles, particularly where several jurisdictions are involved.
- Family conflict, relationship breakdown and differences in values between generations can pose significant risks to long-term wealth preservation.
- Equal treatment does not always produce equal outcomes, making flexibility important where family members live, invest and contribute in different ways.
- Succession should be approached as a gradual transfer of knowledge, responsibility and control rather than a transaction triggered by death or incapacity.
- GIFT City is developing as an international wealth and investment platform, although simpler processes, regulatory coordination and greater predictability remain important.
- The role of the Indian wealth adviser is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary, requiring coordination across investment, legal, tax, fiduciary, insurance and family-governance expertise.
Global Indian Families Are Creating a More Complex Client Map
The discussion opened with the growing internationalisation of Indian families and the effect of geopolitical uncertainty on wealth-planning decisions.
Singapore, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Switzerland and Hong Kong all featured in the conversation, but the broader trend was towards diversification. Families may remain committed to an existing financial centre while also considering alternative jurisdictions for assets, structures or future family needs.
This is increasingly less about choosing one jurisdiction over another and more about avoiding excessive concentration. A family may have an operating business in India, children living abroad and financial assets held elsewhere, creating a client map that spans several legal and regulatory systems.
“Clients are not necessarily asking where they should move,” said a panellist. “They are increasingly asking what their Plan B should look like and whether they have too much concentrated in one place.”
For advisers, this makes jurisdiction selection only one part of the exercise. Residence, asset location, business interests, beneficiary location and the treatment of different structures all need to be considered together.
Externalised Wealth Is Creating New Succession Questions
The panel also examined the growing number of Indian families that have accumulated meaningful pools of wealth offshore over many years.
Some have built international portfolios through legitimate routes such as the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), while children or other family members have subsequently moved overseas for education, employment or business. Over time, relatively modest offshore assets can develop into significant pools of family wealth.
The planning question then changes. Rather than simply determining how capital can be deployed overseas, families need to consider how that wealth should be governed and ultimately transferred when owners and beneficiaries may live in different jurisdictions.
The panel stressed that Indian tax residence and residence under foreign-exchange regulations are separate concepts. Advisers therefore need a clear understanding of where individuals sit from both perspectives before designing cross-border arrangements.
“The structure has to follow the family,” said a panellist. “You cannot decide on the vehicle first and only afterwards ask where the owner and beneficiaries are actually going to be.”
Interest in these issues is also spreading beyond India’s traditional wealth centres. Panellists observed that families in tier-two and tier-three cities are increasingly considering international investment and wealth-planning options, expanding the need for cross-border expertise across the advisory market.
Structures Are Tools, Not Strategies
Asked whether traditional succession models were becoming obsolete, the panel argued instead that they are becoming more interconnected.
Trusts, foundations, holding companies, insurance arrangements and investment vehicles continue to have important roles. What has changed is the expectation that one structure should address every family requirement.
Different pools of capital can require different solutions. A family might use a trust in one jurisdiction while maintaining a separate family office or holding arrangement elsewhere. Structures may operate in parallel or be combined within a wider succession framework.
One panellist compared the process to constructing a building. The entities themselves provide the physical components, but their effectiveness depends on what sits around them.
“The trust, the foundation, the insurance policy and the holding company are the hardware,” said a panellist. “The governance, the family intentions and the decision-making framework are the software.”
That distinction matters because advisers and clients can become absorbed by the technical characteristics of individual vehicles. The panel argued that the starting point should instead be what the family wants to achieve, whether around succession, asset protection, consolidation, governance or control.
Only then should advisers determine which structures are appropriate and how they need to interact.
Governance Must Keep Pace With Changing Families
The complexity does not come from assets alone. Families themselves are becoming more international and, in many cases, more complicated.
The panel pointed to blended families, international marriages, family councils, investment committees and younger generations establishing permanent lives in different countries. These developments mean succession increasingly intersects with relationship risk and family governance.
Cross-border family disputes were highlighted as a particular concern. Matrimonial and family-law outcomes can differ substantially between jurisdictions, requiring specialist advice where relationships, residences and assets cross borders.
More broadly, technically effective structures can still fail if families lack workable mechanisms for making decisions or resolving differences.
“Tax is usually easier to model than family behaviour,” said a panellist. “It is much harder to build a framework that still works when different generations have different values and different ideas about what the wealth is for.”
Family councils, governance charters, investment committees, letters of wishes and clearly defined decision rights can therefore be important complements to legal structuring. Their purpose is not simply administrative. They can help establish expectations before disagreements become disputes.
Equal Does Not Always Mean Identical
A practical example illustrated why succession planning also requires flexibility.
The panel described a founder with three sons, each of whom had been provided with a home, an investment corpus and an opportunity to develop a business. One son was based in Hong Kong, another in Dubai and the third in India.
A decade later, their economic positions had diverged. Property values had moved differently across markets, their businesses had developed at different rates and each had contributed differently to the wider family enterprise.
What appeared equal at the outset therefore no longer necessarily produced equivalent outcomes.
“Equal today may not still be equal ten years from now,” said a panellist. “Lives, markets and contributions do not develop in exactly the same way.”
Insurance was discussed as one potential mechanism for equalising benefits between family members in certain circumstances. The broader lesson, however, was that succession structures need enough flexibility to respond as businesses, investments, residences and family circumstances change.
Rigid equality can create its own problems if it ignores the economic reality that develops over time.
Succession Is a Journey, Not a Trigger Event
One of the strongest messages from the discussion was that succession should not begin when the founder dies or loses capacity.
Effective succession involves a gradual transfer of knowledge, responsibility, decision-making authority and ultimately control. That transition may need to take place over many years.
A founder who retains complete control until a crisis can leave the next generation responsible for structures and assets they have had little opportunity to understand. Conversely, involving family members earlier allows them to develop familiarity with advisers, governance processes and the responsibilities attached to wealth.
“Succession is a journey, not a trigger event,” said a panellist. “The challenge is moving along that continuum from founder control towards a point where the next generation is genuinely ready to take responsibility.”
This does not require control to be surrendered prematurely. It means deciding deliberately what can be shared, delegated or introduced over time.
Regular review is equally important. Marriages, births, relocations, business sales and changing residency can all alter whether an existing arrangement remains suitable.
Advisers Need to Work Backwards From the Family
The panel repeatedly returned to one practical principle: listen first.
Before recommending a trust, foundation, Variable Capital Company (VCC), insurance arrangement or other structure, advisers need to understand what the family wants the wealth to achieve.
That involves questions around current ownership, future beneficiaries, control, succession, liquidity, business interests and the likely location of family members over time.
Beneficiary location is particularly important in cross-border planning. A structure established effectively in one jurisdiction may be treated differently when distributions are received elsewhere, creating legal or tax consequences that were not apparent at inception.
“There is no value in building a sophisticated structure that creates a problem the moment the beneficiary receives money,” said a panellist. “You have to work backwards from the people as well as the assets.”
This makes coordination increasingly important. Complex international families may require investment professionals, lawyers, tax advisers, trustees, insurers and family-governance specialists to work together rather than addressing individual issues in isolation.
The wealth adviser does not need to perform every specialist function, but increasingly needs to recognise when additional expertise is required and ensure that the various pieces remain aligned.
GIFT City Is Advancing, but Simplicity and Certainty Matter
The discussion then turned to what India must do if it is to develop further as an international wealth-management centre.
Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) was cited as evidence of progress. Panellists described the regulatory environment around GIFT International Financial Services Centre (GIFT IFSC) as increasingly engaged with market participants and responsive to international developments.
The first foreign Family Investment Fund (FIF) registration in 2026 was highlighted as one indication of the ecosystem’s development. The discussion also touched on efforts to create more flexible investment structures and segregated portfolios, drawing comparisons with international regimes such as Singapore’s VCC framework.
However, the panel argued that new structures will only achieve their potential if the wider regulatory environment is sufficiently predictable.
Capital controls, taxation, fund regulation, company law and judicial processes can all affect how efficiently international arrangements operate.
“The biggest improvement would be greater certainty around what can and cannot be done,” said a panellist. “Complexity becomes much harder for clients when the answer repeatedly sits in a grey area.”
The emphasis was therefore on simplification and coordination rather than deregulation. Digitalisation has already reduced some administrative burdens, but panellists argued that further streamlining would make India more competitive as an international wealth-management platform.
The panel also cautioned against treating GIFT IFSC as simply tax-free. Its preferential regime can be attractive, but the actual outcome depends on the structure, investor and nature of the income or transaction.
The Indian Wealth Adviser Is Becoming a Coordinator
As family circumstances become more complex, the role of the wealth adviser is expanding beyond investment selection.
Advisers increasingly need to understand how the client’s business interests, family relationships, international residence, succession objectives and governance arrangements fit together.
The panel suggested a practical sequence: understand the family first; establish the objectives; identify regulatory and cross-border constraints; determine where owners and beneficiaries are or may become resident; and only then assess the available structures.
That process becomes particularly important where the structure may need to remain effective across several decades and multiple jurisdictions.
The result is a more multidisciplinary advisory model. The wealth adviser may not provide the tax, legal or fiduciary advice directly, but can play a central role in bringing the appropriate specialists together and ensuring that the overall plan remains coherent.
The Next Phase Will Reward Preparation and Flexibility
In closing, the panel made clear that succession planning for wealthy Indian families is becoming both more international and more continuous.
Trusts, foundations, insurance, holding companies and investment vehicles remain valuable, but their effectiveness depends on whether they reflect the circumstances of the family rather than simply offering an attractive technical solution.
Families that begin planning early can gradually prepare the next generation, adapt structures as circumstances change and address governance issues before they become disputes. Those that wait until a transition is unavoidable have fewer options and less time in which to use them.
For advisers, the opportunity lies in connecting the technical and human sides of the equation: understanding the family’s objectives, recognising cross-border implications and building the right combination of expertise around them.
The central message was straightforward. Successful succession is not simply about transferring assets. It is about creating a framework through which wealth, responsibility and control can move across generations without losing sight of the family it was designed to serve.