UBS family office clients cut US dollar exposure in wealth revamp
About half of the money managers also say they are overexposed to the greenback
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[ZURICH] UBS Group’s family office clients are curbing their financial exposure to the US as part of a revamp in how they manage the world’s shifting macroeconomic landscape.
Almost a third of 307 private investment firms for the ultra-wealthy surveyed this year through late March said they have cut or plan to reduce allocations to assets held in US dollars, Switzerland’s biggest bank said in a report released on Thursday (May 28).
About half of the money managers also said they were overexposed to the greenback, even as North America still makes up the largest slice of their portfolios by region, according to UBS’ 2026 Global Family Office Report.
The same sentiment for other major currencies, such as the British pound and Euro, was less than 10 per cent. Family offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific represented the two largest groups of survey respondents.
“De-US dollarisation is now always a topic when we meet clients,” Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients and global connectivity at the bank’s wealth-management unit, said in an interview. “Family offices are preparing not just for near-term volatility but for an extended period of inter-connected risk.”
The responses from the firms – which manage US$1.3 billion on average – signal how the world’s super rich are adapting their portfolios to heightened levels of geopolitical uncertainty, largely shaped by the more aggressive foreign policy of President Donald Trump in his second term.
Europe’s wealthy elite were already reassessing their US exposure in the first weeks of this year following Trump’s efforts to gain control over Greenland and intervention in Venezuela, but some family offices defied that “Sell America” sentiment with a US deal spree.
Other investment firms for the ultra-wealth have raised bets on sectors benefiting from the fallout of tensions in the Middle East, where many family offices have flocked recently amid geopolitical shifts in regions such as the UK.
Overall, 60 per cent of the family offices polled said they planned to make strategic allocation changes to their portfolios this year, the highest level in UBS’ report since at least 2020. Allotments to developed markets and reductions to real estate are among popular options.
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“There’s a rebalancing going on against the more uncertain investment backdrop,” Yves-Alain Sommerhalder, head of global wealth management solutions at UBS, said in the interview. BLOOMBERG
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