Thursday, 06 November 2025
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, JBR Dubai UAE
Numerous providers of succession services operate in our region with instruments and options for safely carrying a cherished legacy to future generations. However, a recent high profile succession dispute, leading to the Government of Dubai taking control of a major local business has emphatically highlighted the worrying lack of succession planning that still haunts the regional wealth market. Given the well documented, enormous regional transfer of wealth across generations taking place at this time and the increasing number of successful start-ups and family businesses, what are families doing in response to their growing awareness of the absolute necessity of thorough, successfully coordinated and cast-iron succession planning?
The family office sector keeps growing across our region as the drivers of this growth continue to fall into place, but just how robust is this? How are family office businesses managing in the regions’ highly competitive environment? Are emerging family leaders successfully balancing tradition with innovation to avoid costly conflicts and how can family officers navigate their charges through such sensitive issues? What might be the effect of ongoing geopolitical stresses and uncertainty, and how do concerns for this factor in families’ investments and capital allocations? What currently are the top priorities and the leading concerns for the future for family offices and the families they serve?
What can the HNWIs of our region expect to encounter and what can they reasonably demand in terms of uniquely provided and bespoke services from technology as it levels the playing field and provides similar opportunities to broader consumer classes? What also are the main financial technology concerns of HNWIs in our region – cybersecurity and resilience, fraud or achieving the best results from AI led investing? How can financial institutions and family offices best serve the specific needs of the region’s HNWIs with technology while also maintaining their special relationships, and how has their journey to digital maturity developed in the past few years?
Philanthropy is a serious consideration for wealthy families in our region – why is this? And given this, what are the main philanthropic motivations and beneficiaries of the HNWIs of the region as newer generations build or inherit wealth? What role does Islamic Banking have, or will grow to have in shaping philanthropy beyond its inbuilt ethical codes? Is addressing the causes of societal struggles gaining more attention than funding the symptoms and if so, where and how will HNWIs financial power and influence be deployed to improve societal conditions? Can investments with direct philanthropic outcomes ever be a high-yielding activity, and if so what and how? As more of the world’s rich migrate to the region from other cultures, will the proportion of wealth dedicated to philanthropy here increase or decrease?
From where will the best performance come in the future and which alternative investments show the most potential upside? Will it be private credit with its liquidity and high yields? Is AI, quite apart from its use in the business, a promising asset class in its own right? Real estate is likely to remain strong across the region, but which of its verticals will lead in this market and what investment options will perform best – REITS, tokenisation, purchase? Will areas such as infrastructure with its stable returns be more favoured or will crypto currencies gain a bigger part of HNWI portfolios? What does the future hold for alternative investments in our region?
The "Great Wealth Transfer" is happening as baby boomers and other generations transfer assets and wealth to their heirs to some estimated values of $85 trillion globally by 2045. For the GCC the estimated figure being transferred by 2030 is at least US$1 trillion. What will these inheritors - the clients and consumers of private banking and wealth management be expecting of their service providers in the future? How will the private banking market in the region retain its special privileges as technology levels the playing field for all financial services customers. Who or what will be doing the heavy lifting in terms of managing portfolios, families, succession and legacies, and how will the regional wealth management landscape appear after AI has managed the market for a few decades?