Finding and retaining experienced and qualified investment talent remains a challenge for family offices, according to asset manager AlTi Tiedemann Global. Experienced family office professionals are the most critical driver of investment success, but finding the right staff can be a challenge.
The firm’s survey of 146 family offices in its 2025 “Family Office Operational Excellence Report” provided data to detail the issues these firms have when it comes to recruiting, retaining and developing investment staff.
AlTi Tiedemann Global is an independent, global wealth and alternatives manager focused on serving entrepreneurs, multi-generational families, institutions and emerging next-generation leaders as a fiduciary and with alternative investment strategies. According to its survey, approximately 92% of large family offices—those with at least $1 billion in assets under management—reported difficulty with staff recruitment. That figure was 70% for midsize firms (between $250 million and $1 billion AUM) and 80% for small ones (less than $250 million AUM).
For large family offices, 54% reported difficulty retaining staff; 61% of midsize firms said they had these difficulties, while 50% of small firms reported difficulty with staff retention.
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According to the report, the biggest challenge to recruitment and retention is that the long-term career opportunity of working as an investment professional at a family office is either unclear or unattractive. The pool of candidates with the right skill set is small and not expanding fast enough to meet demand.
Another challenge family offices face is finding individuals who are a cultural fit with both the family and existing staff.
“A lot of these larger family offices have people that have been there for a long time, so when you’re bringing something new, you can get a clash-up,” says Erik Christoffersen, managing director and head of the family office practice at AlTi Tiedemann Global.
Additional challenges include the inability to offer competitive compensation packages.
“A lot of these family offices have done an amazing job of retaining people for a long time, and pay has not necessarily kept up with the market rate, and then they start looking at what it would take to get a C-level person or a strong investment/tax/accountant person, and they’re like, ‘Wow, that is a lot more than we’ve been paying or offering today,’” Christoffersen says.
Other issues affecting recruitment include the perceived lack of excitement of working in a family office and limited work flexibility with hours and location.
“Family offices talk about difficulties in recruitment, particularly for investment professionals,” one anonymous CIO of a large single-family office stated in the report. “Successful ones are always prepared to jump ship because their purpose is to run the biggest fund.”
The Talent Pool
The pool of qualified investment professionals continues to shrink, Christoffersen says: “It’s not a growing pool, at least.”
As the number of family offices increases, these firms must also compete for talent with registered investment advisers, multi-family offices, banks and other firms that service family offices for talent.
There are an estimated 8,030 single family offices in the world today, up from roughly 6,130 in 2019, according to 2024 information from Deloitte.
“Everyone’s competing for this talent, and everyone knows that no matter what, the ability to deliver strong investment offerings is central to the family office; it’s also central to these other players that are trying to service family offices,” Christoffersen says.
Per the report, as the pool of qualified candidates continues to tighten, many family offices feel pressured to make compromises on new hires or scramble to replace key team members when they depart.
Across the world, family offices based in the Asia-Pacific region reported greater ease of hiring, relative to their peers, but had much more difficulty retaining staff. On the other hand, North American family offices reported retaining talent to be easy, but they struggled with recruiting. European family offices reported difficulties both in recruiting and retaining talent.
Compensation
According to the report, the average total compensation for a CIO at a family office, including both base salary and bonuses, ranges from $457,000 at a small firm to $1.114 million at a large one. But these figures may not be enough.
“I’ve seen people saying that if you’re going to get a great chief investment officer, you may need to go as high as, depending on the family office and their ability, as high as 5, 6 million dollars,” Christoffersen says. “It’s no longer just a million or two, because you really want great talent.”
The costs for top investment officers and other C-suite positions weigh heavily on family offices’ budgets. At small family offices, C-suite compensation accounts for, on average, 72% of total costs. At midsize and large family offices, executive compensation accounts for 54% and 39% of costs, respectively, according to the report.
“Recognizing the significant weight leadership compensation represents of the overall family office costs, there should be a premium on ensuring that the value these individuals drive or oversee justifies this large ongoing investment,” the report stated.
Outsourcing
Due to the nature of family offices’ very lean teams, especially at smaller offices, many functions, including investment activities and other operations, are outsourced to outside providers.
“You’re not going to be able to get great talent at all the spots,” Christoffersen says. “It’s cost prohibitive.
According to the report, outsourcing is especially valued by family offices which lack adequate in-house expertise. The ability to combine the resources of in-house talent with selective outsourcing is increasingly seen as a hallmark of a high-performing family office.
“It is increasingly evident that almost all (if not all) family offices can only achieve their full talent needs with a hybrid approach of in-house staff supplemented with key talent accessed through outsourcing,” the report stated.
Outsourcing has the benefit of providing specialized expertise that is impractical or too expensive to maintain in-house.
“The advantage of outsourcing is, very often, you can get access to similar or better talent to cover parts of the asset class coverage, certain geographical deal flow, larger macro issues or risk management, without having to have them in house,” Christoffersen says.
“I think more family offices would be better to say, ‘Let me look at my entire talent pool available to me. Who do I have in house? Who do I think I can recruit?’” Christoffersen says. “then, ‘Which outsourcing partners do I have today, what does that talent look like, and do I need to add another outsourcing partner just to get access to better talent in their firm and better networks than those outsourcing partners provide?’”
Tags: AlTi Tiedemann Global, Erik Christoffersen, Family Offices, recruitment, Talent Retention
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