How Australian Family Offices Are Allocating to Private Markets

Australian family offices now allocate roughly 20-25% of their portfolios to private markets, with private equity and venture capital sitting at the core of those allocations. Family offices grew from 10% of all Australian private capital investors in 2020 to 40% by 2024, overtaking superannuation funds as the primary domestic source of private market capital. The shift is being driven by the same forces transforming global family office behaviour: a 524% increase in private market activity since 2016, the structural underperformance of public markets relative to private equity over longer horizons, and a generational handover that is reshaping how Australian wealth gets deployed.

This article looks at the actual data: where Australian family offices are putting their money, how they compare to global peers, what's driving the shift toward direct investing, and what this means for individual wholesale investors trying to understand the same opportunities through a different lens.

The numbers behind the shift

The most striking figure in the Australian context comes from the Australian Investment Council's Private Capital Yearbook. Family offices accounted for 10% of all Australian private capital investors in 2020. By 2024, that number had risen to 40%. Over the same period, superannuation funds (historically the dominant force in Australian private markets) fell from 48% to 13% of the investor base. This is the largest reallocation in the structure of Australian private capital in modern history.

The underlying driver is regulatory. Super funds operate under constraints around liquidity, member services, and reporting that limit how aggressively they can deploy into illiquid private positions. Family offices operate with far more flexibility. They have no member redemption obligations, no APRA capital adequacy framework, and longer time horizons measured in generations rather than annual performance cycles.

Globally, the picture confirms the trend. The UBS Global Family Office Report 2025, which surveyed 317 single family offices managing US$1.1 billion each on average, recorded private equity allocations at 21% of total assets in 2024. Private debt allocations doubled from 2% in 2023 to 4% in 2024, with family offices planning further increases in 2025. The number of family offices tracked by Preqin with exposure to private markets has risen 524% since 2016.

The J.P. Morgan 2026 Global Family Office Report, surveying 333 single family offices across 30 countries with combined wealth of over US$500 billion, found that public markets and private investments hold the majority allocations across the sample. More than three quarters of family offices surveyed by Institutional Investor at its 2025 West Coast Family Office Wealth Conference planned to maintain or increase their private market allocations heading into 2026.

These figures matter for individual wholesale investors because family offices are typically the most sophisticated long-term capital allocators in the market. Where they go, others tend to follow. And what they are doing right now is allocating more aggressively to private markets than at any point in the past two decades.

What Australian family offices are actually buying

Within their private market allocations, Australian family offices show a distinct mix that differs from their US and European peers.

Private equity and venture capital

The dominant allocation. According to IQ-EQ Australia's family office whitepaper with Barton Consulting, Australian single family offices typically allocate 10-25% of portfolios to private equity and venture capital combined, while multi-family offices sit slightly lower at 5-20%. Both ranges represent material commitments that would have been unusual a decade ago.

Within PE and VC, the trend is toward later-stage exposure. Family offices have shown growing appetite for pre-IPO positions in companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Anduril, accessed either through direct SPV structures or through diversified late-stage funds. This reflects the same observation that drives the broader private markets thesis: companies are staying private for longer, and the majority of value creation now happens before listing.

Private credit

The fastest-growing allocation. ASIC's Report 820 estimates the Australian private credit market at A$200 billion in assets under management, having grown 500% over the past decade. Family offices have been significant beneficiaries of bank retreat from middle-market lending, particularly in real estate development and corporate refinancing.

The growth has not been without controversy. ASIC's surveillance of 28 private credit funds between October 2024 and August 2025 identified significant variance in disclosure quality, conflict of interest management, and valuation practices. The most sophisticated family offices have responded by allocating selectively to higher-quality managers and increasing their direct lending activity to bypass intermediary risk altogether.

Real estate and infrastructure

A traditional core holding for Australian family offices, though allocation patterns are shifting. Direct property investment, especially in commercial real estate and development, remains material. The BlackRock Global Family Office Survey found 42% of respondents intending to increase infrastructure allocations specifically, reflecting interest in renewable energy, digital infrastructure, and transport assets aligned with longer holding periods.

Direct deals and co-investments

This is where the most significant behavioural shift has occurred. Approximately 43% of family offices globally now perform deal sourcing entirely in-house, according to BlackRock's data. Australian family offices have moved aggressively in this direction, often forming informal club structures with peers to access larger deals, share due diligence costs, and reduce fee leakage to fund managers.

The PrimaryMarkets analysis on this trend captures the underlying logic well: family offices have been "forming ad hoc club structures for larger deals and coordinating cross-border co-investments to access scale and specialised deal flow". For Australian families specifically, this means working alongside US, European, and Asian peers to access deal flow that no single family office would see on its own.

The Australian context: why family office behaviour matters

Three factors specific to Australia explain why family office allocation patterns are accelerating now, and why they will continue accelerating through the late 2020s.

The great wealth transfer

Australia is in the early stages of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in its history. Estimates from Grant Thornton and other advisory firms suggest A$3.5 trillion will move from over-60s to younger generations over the next 20 years. Some estimates put the figure as high as A$5.4 trillion. This is not a future event. It has already begun.

For Australian family offices, the implications are immediate. Next-generation family members tend to be more comfortable with private market investments, more interested in venture and growth-stage exposure, and more willing to deploy capital into thematic plays like AI, climate technology, and defence. As governance handovers occur, allocation behaviour shifts accordingly.

Super system saturation

Australia's superannuation system holds over A$4.3 trillion in total assets, with some of the largest funds allocating more than 20% to unlisted investments. The system is structurally constrained by its own scale. Large super funds simply cannot deploy meaningful capital into small or mid-sized private market opportunities without creating concentration issues. Family offices fill that gap, accessing deal flow that institutional capital cannot reach efficiently.

This dynamic has reshaped the Australian private capital ecosystem. International fund managers who previously bypassed Australia in favour of Canadian pensions or European sovereigns are increasingly building relationships with Australian family offices directly. The capital base they reach through that channel is now genuinely competitive with institutional channels.

Reduced public market opportunity set

Australia's listed equity market is concentrated. The ASX 200 is dominated by financial services, materials, and consumer staples, with limited exposure to the secular growth themes (AI, defence technology, space, biotech) driving global equity returns. Australian family offices that want meaningful exposure to those themes must either invest internationally (which most do extensively) or access private markets where the companies actually exist.

The contrast with the US is sharp. US family offices, according to UBS data, allocate roughly 86% of their portfolios to North American assets, because they don't need to look offshore to access the companies they want. Australian family offices do not have that luxury. International private markets exposure is structurally embedded in their portfolios because the relevant companies are not listed in Sydney.

How this compares to global family office behaviour

The UBS data provides useful global comparisons. Across all family offices surveyed, the average asset allocation breakdown for 2024 was equities at 30%, fixed income at 18%, cash at 8%, private equity at 21%, private debt at 4%, hedge funds at 4%, real estate at 11%, and gold/precious metals at 2%.

US family offices allocate more to alternatives (43%) than equities (37%), reflecting the maturity of US venture and private equity sectors. Swiss family offices keep 44% in alternative asset classes, with 16% in private equity and 12% in real estate. European family offices sit at 27% private equity within a 49% alternatives allocation.

Asia-Pacific family offices (excluding Greater China) are the fastest-growing regional cohort. The IQ-EQ analysis found Asia now accounts for around 30% of the world's single family offices and 26% of multi-family offices, with 40% of Asian family offices having been established within the last 15 years. Australian family offices sit within this broader Asia-Pacific shift, often allocating capital well beyond their home region.

The relevant insight for individual wholesale investors is that Australian family office behaviour mirrors global patterns but with the additional pressure of needing to access private markets internationally rather than domestically. This shapes how they approach platforms, partnerships, and direct investing.

The shift toward direct investing

The single most important trend in Australian family office behaviour over the past five years has been the move from fund-only investing to direct and co-investment structures.

The motivations are practical. Fund investing involves a 2-and-20 fee structure that compounds significantly over the long holding periods typical in private markets. A 2% management fee on a 10-year hold can erode 20% of gross returns before any carry calculation. For family offices managing hundreds of millions of dollars, those fees represent meaningful capital that could otherwise be deployed.

Direct investing also offers control. Family offices participating in direct deals can negotiate governance rights, information access, and exit terms in ways that limited partners in pooled funds cannot. For wealthy families who built their fortunes operating businesses, this kind of operational involvement aligns with how they think about value creation.

The challenge is sourcing. Direct deal flow at meaningful scale requires either an internal investment team (which most family offices lack at the size to source globally) or a curated relationship with platforms that aggregate quality opportunities. This is where structured private market platforms have found their place in the family office ecosystem.

NonPublic operates in this space specifically. The platform provides Australian wholesale investors, including family offices, with direct SPV-structured access to companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Anduril, Perplexity, Discord, and Databricks. The model preserves the direct economic exposure family offices want while removing the operational burden of sourcing and structuring deals independently.

What individual wholesale investors can learn from family office behaviour

For Australian wholesale investors who do not operate at family office scale, the allocation patterns of these much larger pools of capital still provide useful guidance.

Sizing comes first. Family offices typically allocate 20-25% to private markets, not 50% or 60%. Even at significantly higher net worth and longer time horizons than individual wholesale investors, they treat private markets as a meaningful but minority share of total portfolio. That ratio is a reasonable anchor for individual investors as well.

Diversification follows. Family offices spread their private market exposure across multiple sectors, vintages, and structures rather than concentrating in a single position or single year of capital deployment. Both manager risk and vintage year risk get diluted through that approach.

Patience matters more than most individual investors expect. Family offices accept that liquidity in private markets is structural and that capital committed today may not return for five to ten years. The investors who succeed in this asset class are not chasing tactical opportunities. They are building positions methodically over multiple years.

Platform selection is the variable family offices have grown most disciplined about. As they have shifted toward direct investing, they have become highly selective about which platforms and intermediaries they work with. Due diligence quality matters. So does fee transparency. So does the regulatory standing of the platform itself. NonPublic operates under Australian Financial Services Licence #482668, restricting all offers to wholesale and sophisticated investors as defined under the Corporations Act 2001. That regulatory framework is the kind of structural feature family offices specifically prioritise.

The 2026 outlook

Three structural forces will continue reshaping Australian family office allocation behaviour through 2026 and beyond.

The intergenerational wealth transfer will accelerate, bringing younger principals into decision-making roles. These principals tend to be more comfortable with private markets and thematic investing than their parents.

ASIC's regulatory focus on private markets will increase. Report 823 and the 2026 Key Issues Outlook have signalled tighter oversight of wholesale fund managers, more frequent significant event notifications, and expanded reporting obligations. Family offices will continue to favour platforms that already operate to higher standards rather than waiting for regulation to force the rest of the market to catch up.

The pipeline of high-quality private market opportunities will continue expanding. Pre-IPO companies including SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are heading toward potential IPOs in 2026 and 2027, creating both opportunity (current pre-IPO entry windows) and challenge (post-IPO public market exposure for any remaining private positions). Family offices are positioning for both scenarios simultaneously, allocating capital now while preparing for the liquidity events that will follow. Our 2025 Private Markets Landscape report provides more detailed context on the deal pipeline and current allocation trends.

Australian wholesale investors who want exposure to the same opportunity set can book an introduction call with the NonPublic team to discuss current availability.

NonPublic Pty Ltd (ABN 49 607 216 928) holds Australian Financial Services Licence #482668. Investments are available to wholesale and sophisticated investors as defined under the Corporations Act 2001. This content is general in nature and does not constitute financial product advice. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation, or needs. Investing in private markets involves significant risk, including the potential loss of your entire investment. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. You should obtain independent financial advice before making any investment decision.