Canada’s multi-family office (MFO) sector has undergone significant transformation in recent years, reflecting broader shifts in wealth management and the needs of ultra-high-net-worth families. To get a glimpse into how these shifts are playing out, last year Canadian Family Offices conducted its first-ever survey of MFOs, asking them about their business models, their clientele, their investment priorities and their concerns. This year, we not only repeated that effort but improved upon it, asking more questions and getting responses from nearly 80 MFOs across the country—a big increase from last year. Our study, The Canadian Multi-Family Office Landscape in Canada 2025, is now available for download, and we think it gives anyone interested in family offices some useful insights into MFOs’ roles beyond traditional investment management, as well as their structure, service offerings and strategic outlook.
The study also tries to explore—or at least lend context to—an ongoing debate within the sector: What exactly is a “real” family office? How much wealth does (should) a client of a family office have? And how are MFOs, which are revenue-seeking enterprises, charging and serving their customers while also acting as responsible stewards of their client families’ capital?
A diverse landscape
Ask a dozen experts what a family office is and you are likely to get a dozen different answers. The 2025 Multi-Family Office Landscape in Canada study suggests that Canadian MFOs do indeed vary widely in their size and structure.
- Location: The MFOs in our study are predominantly from the Greater Toronto Area, but Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver are also represented, along with Ottawa, Edmonton, Halifax and Winnipeg.
- Staff size: Nearly half employ fewer than 10 full-time staff, but about one in 10 have more than 50 employees.
- Track record: More than half have been in operation for more than a decade, but a quarter of respondents have been around for less than five years.
- Number of clients: About a quarter of MFOs in our survey are truly “boutique,” serving 10 or fewer families, but almost a third have more than 70 clients.
We found similar diversity on the question of the average net worth of MFO client families—which reflects, in part, the lack of consensus about what constitutes “ultra-high-net-worth” and about what level of wealth is appropriate for family office-level services. In our study, one in five MFOs said that the average net worth of their family clients was less than $15 million, and about a third serve families in the $15 million to $50 million range. Less than half serve families with net worths of more than $50 million, and 24 per cent serve families worth more than $100 million.
What’s a family office, anyway?
A recurring theme in the study is the question of what defines a “real” family office. Traditionally, a family office provides exclusive service to one or a few ultra-high-net-worth families, along with a high level of personalization and discretion. But within that model, there is clearly a wide variance among Canadian MFOs.
For instance, we asked MFOs what level of assets under management they required of their clientele. The single largest cohort of respondents said that their minimum AUM was under $15 million—below most estimates of what constitutes “ultra-high-net-worth.” About a quarter of responses fell into the middle range of $15 million to $50 million, while about one in seven require AUM in excess of $200 million. Notably, nearly one in five respondents said that they had no minimum AUM requirement or the question did not apply to them.
There is similar diversity in the range of services offered. Our study indicates that investment management remains a core service across MFOs, as does—encouragingly—financial education and family governance. Estate planning, philanthropy advisory and tax planning are also offered by a majority of respondents. Very few, however, offer legal or insurance services in-house; only about a third directly provide concierge and lifestyle management services, and nearly half do not provide such services either in-house or by outsourcing.
How MFOs make money
As in last year’s survey, MFOs’ answers showed that they go about billing their clients in varied ways. Nearly a third have revenue models based on investment fees as a percentage of client AUM, while about a quarter charge fixed fees for services. Very few charge an AUM-based investment fee plus a performance fee. The most common answer: some combination of the above.
Nearly half of MFOs said they planned to reduce allocations to the U.S. over the next 12 months.
Our survey dug a little deeper, however, and tried to get a sense of how MFOs manage transparency and alignment of interest with their clients when it comes to investment management. More than two in five said that they function solely as a “financial quarterback” for their clients and outsource all fund management, while nearly one in five outsource most fund management but manage some funds of funds in-house for efficiency. On the other hand, nearly a quarter outsource some fund management but also offer targeted in-house funds because they have expertise in specific areas. And only one of our 79 respondents invested clients exclusively in fund products managed in-house or are offered by an affiliated financial institution.
Navigating an uncertain environment
With tariff turmoil and geopolitical conflict dominating financial headlines this year, one might expect those issues to be top-of-mind for Canadian MFOs. But when we asked them about their top concerns, the most common answer might be a bit of surprise: Canada’s tax rates—the same top concern as in last year’s study. The second most common worry this year also may come as something of a surprise: AI and cybersecurity issues, which ranked far down the list of MFO concerns last year. (Notably, only about 10 per cent of respondents this year said they had been targets of a cyber-attack.)
Geopolitical risks and trade tensions also figured prominently among MFO concerns, and we can see some support for that in how they responded to how they plan to allocate capital globally, particularly vis-à-vis the United States. Nearly half of MFOs said they planned to reduce allocations to the U.S. over the next 12 months. Where do they plan to move that exposure? Almost one in five said they planned to increase allocations to emerging markets, while more than 40 per cent said that they intended to increase exposure to developed markets outside the U.S., such as Europe and Japan.
That might not seem like such a dramatic shift, but it is taking place in the context of family offices’ traditional conservatism as long-term investors. The resulting stability in asset allocations is certainly borne out by this year’s study. When we asked MFOs whether they have increased or decreased clients’ exposure to a range of asset classes—public equities, public fixed income, real estate, private equity, private credit, hedge funds and cryptocurrencies—the most common response across almost all categories was “stayed the same.” (The lone exception was cryptocurrencies, for which the most common response was “do not hold.”)
A similar conservative bent might also be seen in MFOs’ allocations to alternative investments. Numerous global surveys suggest that alts comprise between 40 and 60 per cent of family office portfolios, but Canadian MFOs may be behind the trend. According to our study, alternatives account for less than 40 per cent of allocations in more than 80 per cent of Canadian client portfolios, and for less than half of allocations in more than 90 per cent of them. Nearly one-quarter of MFOs said that alternatives comprise 10 per cent or less of clients’ portfolios.
Those are just a few of the findings in The Multi-Family Office Landscape in Canada 2025, and our full report has plenty more. While it does not pretend to present a complete picture, we think it is an insightful one—and well worth a read for anyone interested in how the family office ecosystem is evolving in Canada today.
To download your copy of The Multi-Family Office Landscape in Canada 2025, click here.
Joe Chidley is Managing Editor of Canadian Family Offices. His 35 years of experience in journalism and communications includes nearly a decade as editor of Canadian Business magazine and as a senior writer and associate publisher at Maclean’s newsmagazine. He served as a columnist at the Financial Post and as editor-in-chief of Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division. He also led the corporate and public affairs department at a major Toronto-based public relations firm for several years.
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