Private markets investments
UBP Family Office Services
Guided by our own values as an entrepreneurial, family-owned bank, at UBP we are committed to providing high-level guidance designed to protect, grow and manage your family’s wealth across generations.
Wealth Governance: Protect
The first step in managing a family’s wealth governance process is to establish a purpose for that wealth. This purpose is the bedrock upon which a successful wealth strategy is built for both today’s and tomorrow’s needs.
With wealth come responsibilities. Defining and aligning the purpose of a family’s wealth is the foundation of success in terms of its management and transition to the next generation. UBP’s Family Office Services team will guide you through the process of identifying a meaningful legacy and help you create a governance framework.
Wealth brings with it a profound responsibility to contribute positively to society. Our Advisory Services team will assist you in defining and aligning the purpose of your philanthropy, ensuring it reflects your values and aspirations. From identifying meaningful causes to creating a strategic roadmap, we'll help you maximise the impact of your giving. With our guidance, you can establish a governance framework that ensures your philanthropic efforts are sustainable and impactful for generations to come.
Any coherent vision needs to be protected from both exogenous and endogenous risks. Correctly ringfencing its assets is essential to protect the family. In collaboration with UBP’s Wealth Planning team, UBP Family Office Services can identify planning opportunities in line with your goals, including such aspects as the transfer of wealth and estate planning, ownership strategy and control, wealth management, wealth engineering, tax suitability, mobility and international relocation, to name but a few.
A family office is usually the tool a family uses to implement its wealth purpose. The office’s mission should set out its own objectives. The scope of its activities must be balanced appropriately in line with the privacy the family requires and the expertise it is willing to insource or outsource.
UBP’s Family Office Services team can advise you on the optimal organisational set-up for your family office, providing support on tax and legal matters as well as accreditation.
Asset Governance: Grow
Attaining both the short-term and the multi-generational goals for your family’s wealth requires an institutional approach. UBP favours the endowment fund model, investing for the future, to satisfy your ongoing income requirements.
Replicating mandates with various private banks may not be the most efficient method of governance. The investment architecture is paramount to delivering the right balance between near-term cash flows and long-term performance. Our approach favours the endowment fund model, characterised by a long-term investment horizon, illiquid premium, asset diversification and cashflow management. This approach draws on the effectiveness of an institutional approach, balancing risk management and performance optimisation, finely tuned to the unique requirements of individual families.
The choice of the right asset classes contributes to the greater part of the overall performance. The endowment fund model advocates an institutional investment approach, including allocations to private markets and exploiting buying opportunities during market corrections, as well as delegating some of the sub-asset classes to the best asset managers through an open architecture model.
Relevant guidance can only be provided and informed investment decisions made, enabling a holistic overview of your assets, with accurate and reliable assessments and reporting on investments. Understanding performance and where potential pockets of risks lie is at the heart of sound investment which leads to risk-adjusted returns.
We have a unique approach to guiding you in your plans to pass on your wealth to the next generation while integrating sustainability goals and ESG criteria into your investment decisions. We follow a thorough process of research and setting clear objectives for portfolio construction. The offering ranges from family governance and philanthropy to asset allocation with the aim of reflecting your sustainability preferences and enabling you to invest responsibly.
Expertise Governance: Manage
Each family is unique, and therefore so is the combination of services it requires. Our knowledge and experience built up over the years and our extensive network allow us to share best practice and guide our clients to the solutions that best suit them.
Education is one of the important pillars for the family to grow and understand its environment in the most effective way. We consider that sharing our unique experience, derived from years of working alongside Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) families, is an obligation and a moral commitment to our clients. Creating the right forum to do so is part of our UBP Family Office Services’ offering.
UBP Family Office Services has identified and maintains a comprehensive proprietary database of experts, services and product specialists working within the family-office space. This valuable resource can be made available upon request.
Our mission
UBP Family Office Services is recognised to provide an objective perspective, as well as bespoke services, innovative solutions and reliable, ongoing support. We offer families and future generations security and peace of mind over any wealth management issues. We act as UBP’s centre of excellence, bringing together the Bank’s proprietary expertise, a spirit of innovation and a strong network of independent advisors to help ensure that the Bank’s largest families thrive and prosper.
Our approach
UBP Family Office Services supports this objective by ensuring that UBP’s largest families and their family offices receive privileged access to the full range of UBP’s wealth-governance advice and institutional investment solutions.
"Managing a family-owned private bank has enabled us to acquire a better understanding of the responsibilities and complexities that the management of family wealth implies."
Chinese family office services
What is unique about Chinese family offices?
A Chinese family office is a family office that has its roots in China and is suited to Chinese-style market regulations. It essentially provides wealth management services to Chinese entrepreneurs. It features the business characteristics of well-established Western family offices, while crucially combining them with the unique characteristics of traditional Chinese culture, such as the principle of giving back to society and contributing to common prosperity.
The hallmarks of a Chinese family office
The Chinese family office protects its family’s wealth and assets. It has a broad view of, and tends to, the family’s needs for the long term.
The Chinese family office contributes to the family’s long-term development preserving and expanding not only its tangible assets (wealth and family businesses), but also its intangible assets (human capital and social capital), which are equally important.
Strong families provide strong foundations for the whole world. Family wealth in China also belongs to society. Building a family’s values is one of the core functions of Chinese family offices and involves charitable funds and events. It also involves instilling family ethics into younger generations, while guiding and supporting the family in fulfilling its social responsibilities and paying back to society, ensuring that the family’s wealth adheres to the principles of honesty and legal compliance.
Offshore investing
Qualified Domestic Limited Partnership (QDLP) private funds
We provide Qualified Investors (as defined by the local law) with access to the offshore markets. UBP’s QDLP private fund managers identify and select strongly performing offshore products in accordance with each investor’s risk appetite.
Onshore investing
Onshore investment model
For the onshore market, UBP’s QDLP private fund managers select and identify strong performing offshore products and launch onshore QDLP private funds within the quota approved by the regulators. Onshore QDLP private fund distributions and subscriptions follow the same regulatory rules as mainstream private funds.
Our local experts are here to serve you
Primed with excellent financial infrastructure, diversified financial institutions, advantageous policies, and tax incentives, Hong Kong and Singapore have been the top choices for family offices in Asia. At UBP we have hired the best talents to make sure we can find the right solution for you and your family in Asia.
Your Family Office Services team
UBP is committed to providing high-level guidance designed to protect, grow and manage your family’s wealth.
Working alongside your relationship manager, our dedicated and experienced Family Office Services team will guide you and your family to arrive at a common purpose for your family’s wealth. Sharing our proprietary expertise and knowledge garnered from years of working closely with UHNW families, together we will formulate a family constitution to formalise your family’s aspirations and integrate it into an institutional-style asset management solution.
Maintaining an objective standpoint, the Family Office Services team draws both on the strengths of over twenty UBP entities around the world, including expertise in wealth planning and asset management, and on an extensive network of highly qualified and reputable third-party specialists, providers and advisors.
We firmly believe that this process is a partnership. Aligned with this philosophy, you can expect from us a dynamic and adaptable approach, underscored by our direct and active engagement. Our commitment is to provide advice meticulously tailored to fit the unique needs and aspirations of your family.
Recognition
WealthBriefing Swiss Awards 2024 - Best Family Office Offering
Your contact
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Monica Espinosa
Head of Family Office Services
08.05.2025
One Bank: The strength of teamwork
We recently held UBP’s Wealth & Asset Management Forum at the InterContinental hotel in Geneva. The event brought together 250 people from different – in some cases distant – parts of the group. The guests included many fresh faces following the acquisition of SG Kleinwort Hambros and SG Private Banking Switzerland, as well as some non-acquisition joiners who came to UBP less than a year ago.
24.04.2025
Teresa Lee hits the ground running as UBP’s North Asia boss
More than six months into her role as region head for North Asia at UBP, Teresa Lee is wasting no time making her mark across the markets of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan – and even the Philippines.
01.04.2025
Union Bancaire Privée completes acquisition of SG Kleinwort Hambros, strengthening UK presence
Union Bancaire Privée, UBP SA (UBP) announces the successful completion of its acquisition of SG Kleinwort Hambros from Societe Generale, marking a significant milestone in the Bank’s international growth strategy.
29.01.2025
"AI generates an alert in the event of an atypical transaction"
UBP Monaco, as do many private banks, remains very cautious over the use of AI. CEO Sérène El Masri explains why.
22.01.2025
The strategic appeal of Greenland
With Denmark-controlled Greenland attracting increasing geopolitical interest as a naval and resource-rich hotspot, our Chief Strategist looks into the factors at play for this independence-minded Arctic territory.
15.10.2024
Selective growth through uncompromising quality of service
At Union Bancaire Privée (UBP), External Asset Managers (EAMs) represent around CHF 20 billion in assets under management (AuM), and so the service and support it provides to EAMs is an important part of UBP’s business. We spoke about UBP’s EAM business in Switzerland with those that lead it.
13.08.2024
Solving the solvency jargon
Summer is in full swing, and with it comes first-half results season for Swiss banks. These announcements can sometimes seem like an alphabet soup, with terms like CET1, LCR and NSFR representing financial ratios that are meant to help assess a bank’s solvency.
06.08.2024
2024 US Elections: a new start
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race, and the rise of Kamala Harris: unexpected twists have emerged in the US presidential election.
05.08.2024
UBP signs two exclusive agreements to acquire Societe Generale’s international private banking operations in the UK and in Switzerland
Union Bancaire Privée, UBP SA (UBP) and Societe Generale announced today that they have entered into two exclusive agreements whereby UBP will acquire Societe Generale’s Swiss private banking activities (Societe Generale Private Banking Suisse) as well as their UK and Channel Islands wealth management arm (SG Kleinwort Hambros). Both transactions are expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
FAQ
QDLP stands for "Qualified Domestic Limited Partnership". It's a program in China that allows selected foreign asset managers to raise funds in China to invest in their overseas traditional and alternative investment products.
A family office is dedicated to managing the wealth of a family (in the case of a single-family office) or several families (in the case of a multi-family office). This activity can be carried out under various legal forms and in very different ways depending on the expectations of the families. The primary goal of a family office is to preserve, manage, and grow the wealth of these families over the long term, with a transgenerational vision. Family offices are characterised by a wide range of services, such as investment management, education support, accounting, philanthropic activities, art preservation, and concierge services.
They generally tend to outsource other services, such as family governance, wealth engineering activities, or certain phases of the investment process. Each family office has its own specifics as it aims to meet the individual needs of the families, and each family is unique.
A Chinese family office is a family office that has its roots in China and is suited to Chinese-style market regulations. It essentially provides wealth management services to Chinese entrepreneurs. It features the business characteristics of well-established Western family offices, while crucially combining them with the unique characteristics of traditional Chinese culture, such as the principle of giving back to society and contributing to common prosperity.