There appears to be a trend of banks – and now the Bank of Singapore has entered the fray – offering services that replicate some of the tasks that family offices perform. In this specific case, BoS said the solution is aimed at UHNW people who are not quite ready to launch a single-family office because of costs and other demands.

Bank of Singapore aims to shake up the way family office services can be delivered to ultra-high net worth clients who are not yet ready to create their own single-family office.

The new solution, aimed at clients in Singapore, is called the Bank of Singapore Family Office Catalyst. 

“This solution provides principal advantages traditionally associated with a single-family office – access to specialised investment expertise and eligibility for tax exemptions – without the need to establish and manage a dedicated SFO,” the bank said in a statement yesterday. 

BoS will be appointed as the fund manager of the UHNW individual's investment vehicle which can qualify for tax exemptions under Sections 13O and 13U of the Income Tax Act 1947, similar to those available to single-family offices, provided the schemes’ conditions are met. The funds in the investment vehicle, with at least $20 million assets under management, will be professionally managed by the bank either through discretionary portfolio management (DPM) or advisory portfolio management (APM), it said.

The private bank said the launch of the solution is “timely” because building an SFO can be costly; it cited a 2024 McKinsey report saying that rising operational costs and the need to have access to technology-enabled platforms were among the top five challenges that Asia-Pacific family offices face.

Besides the funds, clients using the solution can use the lender’s services such as wealth planning and trust services. Clients have freedom to switch to an SFO if they want to do so later.

“Ultra-high net worth individuals continue to be keen to professionalise the management of their wealth, and many are exploring alternative options to single-family offices. Concerns around high operating costs and the challenge of attracting suitable investment talent amid intense competition, are prompting them to consider more efficient solutions,” Lim Leong Guan, global head of financial intermediaries, family office and wealth advisory, BoS, said in a statement. “Our family office catalyst solution addresses these issues by allowing these individuals to tap into the deep expertise of our portfolio management teams to manage their assets and still qualify for tax incentives, supplemented by the bank’s comprehensive wealth management ecosystem. We believe this presents a cost-efficient and holistic alternative solution to setting up their own SFOs.”

The bank trumpeted its equity portfolio performance: as of June 2025; its Asia equity portfolio delivered a 14.2 per cent year-to-date return, while its Singapore equity portfolio posted 12.6 per cent gains. Over the last five years, annualised returns reached 12.7 per cent for its Singapore equity portfolio, outperforming reference indices, it said. 

Family office-as-a-service 
Competition in the family offices and associated sectors remains strong. For example, in June 2023, Singapore-headquartered DBS Private Bank said it playing to the jurisdiction’s drive to be a prime destination for ultra-high net worth individuals and families. The bank launched the DBS Multi Family Office Foundry VCC. DBS said it was the world’s first bank-backed multi-family office to use the jurisdiction’s Variable Capital Company structure which was introduced in early 2020.

Services from the Bank of Singapore, DBS and others also speak to a trend of firms offering "family office-as-a-service" capabilities so that families don't have to build all their operations and systems from the ground up, but can tap into an off-the-shelf system that is also customisable. Examples of firms offering such services include MyFO, Eton Solutions and SS&C.

BoS said the ultra-HNW segment is a “strategic focus,” clocking double-digit year-on-year AuM growth. Clients in this segment have a net worth of $250 million and above.

(Editor's note: This shows why banks in jurisdictions such as Singapore – home now to more than 2,000 family offices, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore in January – are so keen to tap into this market. They realise that some wealthy individuals aren't quite ready yet to build SFOs, but have significant wealth and could eventually create such structures. The reasons for reluctance to build SFOs among some people, as the article states, partly stem from the costs.

Those costs aren't getting easier to handle. It might seem that one option for those unwilling to build an SFO is to join a multi-family office, where costs can be shared to some extent. But that is not always straightforward, and if a client has a harmonious relationship with a bank – as Bank of Singapore hopes – then this sort of solution might be a smart move to retain a chunk of business. As we note, BoS is not on its own – DBS is in the space. There are also firms – mostly US-based – which are creating "hybrid" family office platforms and services for FOs.

This activity certainly illustrates the ferment and innovation that is happening in Singpaore and wider Asia. This news service has already noted the amount of activity in the external asset management industry in Singpaore/Southeast Asia.)