Who’s managing the most money for family offices? This week, Crain Currency crunched the numbers from our sister publication Pensions & Investments to find out. Using P&I’s annual ranking of the world’s largest money managers, we pulled the firms with the most assets from family office clients and ranked them from highest to lowest. Marcus Baram walks through the results and what they reveal about industry trends. Also in this week’s issue: According to BlackRock’s 2024 Global Family Office Survey, private credit, infrastructure and real assets now make up 42% of family office portfolios. I report on why confidence in these asset classes is growing, even as access and fees remain hurdles.\n\nThe top asset managers winning the family office race in 2025\n\nBy MARCUS BARAM\n\n‘The core principles of our founding family have remained steadfast — service, expertise and integrity,’ says Pamela Lucina, who leads the family office unit at Northern Trust. The Chicago-based financial services behemoth is the top manager of family office assets, with assets under management (AUM) of $170 billion, according to P&I data. That’s more than bigger firms like BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, Vanguard, Goldman Sachs and UBS. Overall, the total AUM for single-family offices in 2025 exceeds $4.67 trillion. Northern Trust is closely followed on the list by Morgan Stanley with $156 billion. Rounding out the top 10 are BlackRock, Oaktree Capital Management, Franklin Templeton, Silvercrest Asset Management Group, Brookfield Asset Management, StepStone Group, New York Life Investments and Ares Management.\n\nFor some firms, family office assets make up a substantial share of their total AUM. Northern Trust and Morgan Stanley’s family office assets total about 10% of their AUM. At Silvercrest, that figure is even more pronounced, with 68.5% of its AUM tied to family offices. For others on the list, such as BlackRock (0.2%) and Franklin Templeton (1%), their family office assets constitute a tiny share of their total AUM.\n\nLucina attributes Northern Trust’s role to the history of its founding family, the Smiths, who launched the firm in 1889 to provide trust and banking services to Chicago’s wealthier residents. ‘We’ve built it client by client at a time,’ she said. ‘We have more than 550 family offices, and what comes from that is a really strong community,’ that network with each other. Northern Trust does a benchmarking analysis of clients’ needs and connects like-minded clients ‘so that they’re not doing things from scratch.’ That focus helped drive a 15% increase in family office AUM from 2023 to 2024, making this the fastest-growing division of Northern Trust, Lucina said.\n\nPart of the appeal to family offices, she said, is the firm's approach. ‘We’re not known as a sales culture … they don’t want to be sold,’ Lucina said. ‘We aren’t in the investment banking business, we’re in the wealth business — asset servicing and asset management.’\n\nMorgan Stanley, meanwhile, has long worked with family offices but formalized its efforts five years ago with the launch of its Morgan Stanley Family Office Group. The unit provides wealth management, planning, data management and operational services, next-generation education and lifestyle management. ‘It’s a more holistic relationship,’ said Daniel DiBiasio, the head of Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management, which serves approximately 100 families with a combined net worth of more than $350 billion. By taking over a broader range of responsibilities for family offices, the firm has moved from ‘vendor to partner,’ he said. ‘What we're offering is a fully integrated solution that allows the family to exist however they want and succeed across generations,’ DiBiasio said.\n\nWhile most of the family offices in the top 10 primarily serve North American families, many have a strong international presence. Franklin Templeton has operated in the United Arab Emirates since 2000 and in Saudi Arabia, in 2024 to support some of the region’s largest family offices. Silvercrest Asset Management, which was founded in 2002, specializes in what it calls ‘value-oriented equity management’ along with fixed income and alternative strategies. The firm is known for its proprietary investment strategies and research capabilities. As of March, it reportedly served 837 clients. The publicly traded firm announced that its total AUM had reached a record $36.7 billion. Although Silvercrest noted a slowdown in its pipeline, it recently won a $300 million mandate from a family office.\n\nNew York-based Ares Management, which focuses on alternative investments, has expanded its wealth platform across the U.S., Europe and Asia. As of the end of 2024, the firm reported $484 billion of AUM in total. Ares also partnered directly with wealthy families on deals — for example, with the Swiss retail clothing dynasty. StepStone Group, a global investment firm responsible for over $701 billion in total AUM, is known for helping clients invest in private markets. The New York-based firm’s investments span private equity, real assets and private debt. It also lends to family offices, purchasing Greenwood Industries.\n\nAs the number of family offices worldwide grows, along with the scale of their wealth, demand for asset management services continues to rise. ‘We still have market share with which to grow, both domestically and internationally,’ said Northern Trust's Lucina. ‘As family offices grow, their needs become more complex, and they need a partner at their side.’\n\nAlternatives now make up 42% of family office portfolios\n\nBy JASMINE SUAREZ\n\nDespite a challenging macroeconomic landscape, family offices are doubling down on private markets — signaling growing confidence in alternative assets as essential building blocks of long-term portfolios. According to new research from BlackRock, private credit, infrastructure and secondaries are emerging as key fundraising bright spots in 2025. Notably, the number of family offices allocating to private markets has surged more than fivefold since 2016 — a 524% increase that underscores the sector’s growing appeal to this investor class. Now, family offices aren’t just participating — they’re committing in a big way. Family offices now allocate, on average, 42% of their portfolios to alternative investments, according to BlackRock. That’s up from 39% in the firm’s prior report. And while volatility and geopolitical shocks have made many investors cautious, family offices continue to view private markets as a source of yield, diversification and uncorrelated returns — especially in a world where traditional 60/40 portfolios of stocks and bonds no longer suffice.\n\n‘Alternatives are more important than ever for family offices,’ the report said, with particular interest in private credit and infrastructure — two asset classes that align with secular trends and offer potential resilience in a higher-rate environment. Private credit has become a standout. More than half (51%) of family offices surveyed feel bullish about its prospects, and nearly one-third (32%) plan to increase their allocations to the asset class in 2025–26, the highest of any alternative strategy. The attraction lies in its total return and yield characteristics, along with the growing diversity of strategies such as direct lending and opportunistic credit. Family offices are not only increasing allocations to private credit but also treating it as a powerful portfolio tool, said Erik Christoffersen, managing director of the wealth management firm AlTi Tiedemann Global. ‘Private credit is offering attractive, equitylike returns and risk characteristics of traditional fixed income,’ he said. ‘We are seeing net returns between the high single digits to high teens, considerably stronger than what munis, Treasuries and traditional corporate debt can offer today.’\n\nThat momentum is playing out in real time, said Seth Katz, a partner and head of investments at Summit Trail Advisors. ‘We have been active in private credit for our entire 10-year existence,’ he said. ‘It is an attractive place for clients to diversify away from marketable fixed income. You can often be in the senior part of the capital structure, and it’s typically a floating-rate security, which is appealing in this environment.’\n\nBut as capital continues to flood into the space, Katz cautions that manager selection is becoming increasingly critical. ‘As more and more investors are there, it becomes more competitive, more efficient and perhaps more difficult to generate returns,’ he said.\n\nInfrastructure is not far behind: 75% of family offices report a positive outlook for the asset class, and 30% intend to boost allocations over the next two years. ‘The sustained demand and interest in private credit and infrastructure from family offices is a testament to the illiquidity premium and differentiated return opportunity in the current investment landscape,’ Lili Forouraghi, head of family office, health care, endowment and foundations for BlackRock in the U.S., said. ‘Access to opportunities and the right strategies continue to rise in importance as these asset classes evolve from niche strategies to the cornerstone of client portfolios.’\n\nSummit Trail's Katz sees similar tailwinds driving infrastructure allocations. ‘Like private credit, infrastructure offers strong cash flow profiles and hard-asset collateral that’s essential and necessary,’ he said. Katz points to secular trends like the energy transition and rising power demand as long-term growth drivers. ‘The increased energy needs from everything from aging infrastructure to AI and data centers — that’s a topic we’re focused on: How to access, through investment, the future need for power in the U.S.,’ he said.\n\nMany are prioritizing value-added and opportunistic strategies over traditional core investments, seeking exposure to themes like energy transition, data centers and supply chain modernization. Still, enthusiasm is tempered by practical challenges. A full 72% of family offices cite high fees as the top obstacle to investing in private markets. Others point to transparency, liquidity and sourcing high-quality deals as additional hurdles. ‘For many of our clients, they’re coming to us to do that work on their behalf,’ Katz said. ‘We’ve built an experienced investment team to focus on accessing and sourcing high-quality private investments.’ For larger clients with in-house capabilities, Summit Trail acts as a complementary resource, he said. To bridge capability gaps, many are seeking deeper partnerships with managers and advisers. Over half of respondents acknowledged internal shortfalls in private-market analytics (75%), deal sourcing (63%) and reporting (57%). Around one-fourth of family offices already use or are open to working with outsourced CIOs — a sign of the increasing institutionalization of the space.\n\nAs family offices navigate a world of geopolitical upheaval, inflationary pressures and evolving market rules, their commitment to private markets appears only to be strengthening. The message is clear: In an era of structural change, the search for differentiated returns is leading more families deeper into the private sphere. But as the private markets mature, Katz warned, the challenge is staying ahead. ‘The more money that goes in, the harder it becomes to find inefficiencies,’ he said. ‘It puts more pressure on allocators to do even more work — and to do it better.’

Aug. 11, 2025: Who manages the most family office money? Plus, why private credit is rising

The article analyzes the top asset managers of family office assets in 2025, with Northern Trust leading at $170 billion in assets under management (AUM), followed by Morgan Stanley at $156 billion. It highlights that family office assets now make up 42% of portfolios, driven by growing confidence in private credit, infrastructure, and real assets. Despite challenges like high fees, transparency, and liquidity, family offices are increasing allocations to private markets, with over half expressing bullishness toward private credit and 75% optimistic about infrastructure. The piece also notes that Northern Trust and Morgan Stanley serve large numbers of family offices and have formalized their family office units to offer holistic wealth management services, while firms like Silvercrest and Ares Management specialize in alternative investments and have expanded globally.