The world’s richest families and dollar-denominated assets

The world’s richest families are gradually reassessing their attachment to the US dollar, reducing its share in investment portfolios amid rising geopolitical risks, increasing US sovereign debt, and a broader reassessment of global currency strategies, Reuters reports citing a UBS study.

This does not refer to retail investors or short-term speculators, but to so-called family offices — private investment structures of ultra-wealthy families that manage capital at the level of billions of dollars and design long-term strategies for allocating assets across regions, currencies, and sectors.

According to the UBS Global Family Office Report 2026, about two-thirds of surveyed family investment firms expect confidence in the dollar as a global reserve currency to weaken over the coming year. This is one of the highest levels of skepticism toward the US currency in recent years of observation.

Importantly, the survey was conducted between January and late March, before the dollar began to show stronger performance against other currencies. This means that market expectations were formed in a weaker-dollar environment, which reinforced the trend toward strategy reassessment.

According to UBS, nearly half of family offices concluded that their portfolios are overweight in dollar exposure. In other words, the share of US dollar-denominated assets is now perceived as excessive in terms of current risk conditions. In response, many investors are gradually reducing dependence on the US currency, reallocating capital into other asset classes. Key directions include emerging market equities, particularly in Asia, as well as Western European markets and infrastructure projects.

This effectively reflects a broader process of rethinking the so-called “dollar-centric portfolio,” which for decades has been considered the standard model of global investing. Now, amid rising US debt levels and increasing geopolitical tension, this model is increasingly being reassessed.

Interestingly, family offices are not only reallocating equities or currency positions. Many are also reshaping their long-term investment structures, increasing exposure to infrastructure projects — from energy to transport and digital networks. At the same time, interest in real estate as a traditional defensive asset is declining.

UBS notes that for the first time in a long period, there is sustained interest in regions outside the United States. Bank representatives emphasize particularly strong growth in attention toward the Asia-Pacific region and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe. This trend affects not only non-US investors but also some US-based family offices, although their participation in the de-dollarization process remains limited.

Geopolitical conflicts have become another key factor influencing investor strategy. According to UBS, they now rank as the top concern for wealthy families when allocating capital. This is leading investment strategies to increasingly incorporate geographic diversification and so-called multishoring — distributing assets and operations across multiple jurisdictions to reduce risk.

The study included 307 family investment structures worldwide. The average net worth per family in the sample was about $2.7 billion, highlighting the scale and significance of the findings for global capital markets.

Analysts note that such changes in the behavior of the largest private investors should not be viewed as a short-term reaction. Instead, they represent a gradual shift in the global architecture of capital, where the dollar remains the key currency but is no longer seen as the unquestioned center of the global financial system.