Family Office AI Statistics 2026: Adoption, Investment and the Expertise Gap

1. The Short Answer: It Depends Who You Ask

How many family offices use AI depends on who is counted and what counts as use. Each of the big 2025 and 2026 surveys asks its own question, so each gives its own answer.

Ocorian's poll of 200 family members and full-time family office staff, run in February 2026, found "86% are using AI technology to improve their operations and data insights" (Ocorian, March 24, 2026). Citi surveyed 351 offices in June and July 2026 and asked about stage instead: "The largest group of respondents (40%) describes their organizations as being in early adoption," and 19% reported no adoption (Citi Wealth, 2026 Global Family Office Report, p. 102).

Both hold up. One counts people and any use; the other counts offices and asks how far along each is. The chart sets six surveys side by side.

Quote any of these numbers with its question attached, as sections 4 to 9 do.

2. How to Read These Numbers

Family office surveys are small, self-reported and published by financial firms, most of them private banks and wealth managers. Ask five questions before you quote one.

• Who was counted? Most of these surveys count offices, one answer per office. Ocorian counted 200 people, family members and staff, and BNY's figure on AI as an investment theme counts investment professionals, so read those as shares of people.
• What counts as use? Citi asks offices to place themselves on a five-stage scale. RBC asks whether AI is embedded and essential to workflow, BNY whether it helps make investment decisions and BlackRock whether it improves the investing process.
• Who are the offices? Samples run from 155 offices (RBC, North America only) to 351 (Citi, 41 countries), and average net worth from $1.6bn in J.P. Morgan's sample to $2.7bn in UBS's. A smaller family should lean on Citi's split by size in section 4.
• When was it asked? BlackRock's fieldwork began in March 2025, and Citi's 2026 survey ran in June and July 2026. In a field moving this fast, treat a 2025 figure as a baseline.
• Who published it? Every survey here comes from a financial firm, and several worked with research firms: Campden Wealth with RBC, Illuminas with BlackRock, The Harris Poll with BNY, and PureProfile, which ran Ocorian's interviews.

Every figure on this page names its publisher, sample and date, so you can quote it as it stands.

3. The Numbers at a Glance

Nine figures worth knowing, each with its source and date.

• 86% of the 200 family members and full-time staff Ocorian polled in February 2026 use AI to improve operations and data insights (Ocorian, March 24, 2026).
• 40% of the 351 offices in Citi's 2026 survey describe themselves as in early adoption, the largest group (Citi Wealth, September 22, 2026).
• 19% of those 351 offices report no adoption (Citi Wealth, September 22, 2026).
• 50 percent of respondents in RBC's survey of 155 North American offices say AI is embedded and essential to workflow (RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth, September 29, 2026).
• 52% of the 282 single family offices BNY surveyed use AI to help make investment decisions (BNY Wealth, June 2025).
• 65% of the 307 offices in UBS's survey are "already invested across the value chain" of AI (UBS Global Family Office Report 2026, May 28, 2026).
• 57% of respondents in Citi's 2025 survey of 346 offices named lack of internal expertise, the chief barrier to adopting technology (Citi Wealth, 2025 Global Family Office Report, p. 108).
• 24% of respondents in Citi's 2026 survey report no measurable impact from AI yet (Citi Wealth, September 2026).
• 73% of respondents in RBC's survey "still believe investment reporting is too manual" (RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth, September 29, 2026, p. 32).

Citi's 40% and 19% are slices of one scale, and Ocorian's 86% counts people.

4. Adoption in Operations

Citi's two reports show how fast this is moving; the other surveys give single readings.

Citi's 2026 report gives the fullest picture. Of 351 offices surveyed in June and July 2026, 19% report no adoption, 40% early adoption, 30% moderate and 10% advanced, and 2% sit at the top of its five stages (Citi Wealth, AI chapter, pp. 101 to 111).

A year earlier, by Citi's own account in the 2026 report, "more than half of family offices reported zero usage." Its 2025 report found "More than a fifth of respondents (22%) had automated some operational tasks or are doing investment analysis or forecasts with the help of AI, up from around 13% last year" (Citi Wealth 2025, 346 offices, p. 110).

Small offices lag. Among offices below $500m in assets under management, "more than a quarter (26%) report no adoption, double the level reported by their larger peers (13%)" (Citi Wealth, September 22, 2026).

Two other surveys add their own measures:

• "50 percent say AI is embedded and essential to workflow while 24 percent disagree" (RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth, 155 offices, September 29, 2026).
• 33% of 175 single family offices are deploying AI internally to improve the investing process (BlackRock Global Family Office Survey 2025, June 2025).

The spread is the finding. An office learns more from answering Citi's five-stage question about itself than from any of these averages.

5. What Offices Use AI For, and What It Has Delivered

The uses that have spread sit close to the paperwork. The uses closest to returns have barely started.

• 16% of offices already use AI extensively for meeting notes, and another 22% are implementing solutions (Citi Wealth, September 2026, p. 105).
• "Half of offices now use AI to research text, news and transcripts, and roughly a third use it in investment reporting and internal knowledge bases" (RBC, September 2026, p. 32).
• Investment analytics is the top internal use in BlackRock's survey, with 34% of offices using AI for it today (BlackRock Global Family Office Survey 2025, June 2025).
• "A few (17%) family offices are using AI to help with investment manager due diligence and reporting" (BlackRock, June 2025).
• "alpha creation is at only 4% extensive usage, with 43% of respondents not using AI for this purpose" (Citi Wealth, September 2026, p. 108).
• "45 percent would like to use AI in risk management and 35 percent in investment manager selection, but only around a quarter are there" (RBC, September 2026).

On results, Citi's respondents name faster information processing as the top benefit, cited by 67%. They "also reported benefits from AI in reducing manual work (35%), accelerating due diligence (35%), and improving decision-support quality (33%)" (Citi Wealth, p. 111).

The same survey carries a sober counterweight: "24% of respondents reported no measurable impact yet."

The early wins come from reading and summarizing. Citi's 4% on alpha shows how far the investment side still has to go.

6. AI as an Investment Theme

As an investment, AI draws strong interest and plenty of doubt about price, often from the same offices.

• 65% of family offices plan to prioritize AI investments now or in the future (J.P. Morgan Private Bank, 2026 Global Family Office Report, 333 single family offices surveyed May to July 2025, p. 4).
• 65% of the offices in UBS's survey are "already invested across the value chain" (UBS Global Family Office Report 2026, 307 offices surveyed January 22 to March 30, 2026).
• UBS found Southeast Asia's offices in front, "with 88% already invested in the theme, the highest of any region."
• AI was picked as an investment theme "by a combined 85 percent of offices" across two horizons: 59% for the next 12 months and 64% for the next 2 to 5 years (RBC, September 2026).
• 83% of investment professionals ranked AI among their highest-conviction themes for the next five years (BNY Wealth, June 2025).
• Only 7% of Ocorian's respondents "are currently seeking investment opportunities in the sector" (Ocorian, March 2026).
• Ocorian also found "nearly three out of four (74%) expecting to increase investment in AI and other digital assets."

The doubts come from RBC's offices, the same ones that picked the theme:

• "Seventy-five percent expect an AI investment bubble to burst within five years" (RBC, September 2026).
• "More than half of offices (59 percent) agree that returns on AI investments will not meet current expectations" (RBC, September 2026).

Buying exposure to AI and using AI inside the office are separate decisions, and the surveys measure them separately.

7. Barriers: Expertise, Data and Talent

Ask offices what holds them back and the answers come back to expertise and data.

• "Lack of internal expertise is chief among these (57%)," in Citi's 2025 survey of 346 offices (Citi Wealth, September 2025, p. 108).
• The same survey found "a lack of awareness of available options (34%)." Citi's question covered technology adoption in general, AI included.
• 47% cite privacy and data security concerns (BlackRock Global Family Office Survey 2025, 175 single family offices, p. 21).
• 44% cite a lack of in-house AI expertise (BlackRock, p. 21).
• "72% believe the major impact of AI on how family offices are run will not be felt for between two to five years" (Ocorian, 200 family members and staff, February 2026).

Most of what holds offices back is people and data. Section 9 shows how few people most offices have.

8. Cybersecurity and Fraud Risk

Cybersecurity jumped to the top of the worry list. In RBC's survey it is now the top operational concern, "cited by 59 percent of respondents. Last year it ranked near the bottom, cited by just 16 percent" (RBC, September 2026, p. 36).

• "Fifty-nine percent of offices experienced phishing attempts this year" (RBC, September 29, 2026).
• 25 percent "saw a family member's personal accounts breached" (RBC, September 29, 2026).
• Use of "two-factor authentication fell from 92 to 83 percent" (RBC, September 29, 2026).
• Cybersecurity tops J.P. Morgan's list of service gaps, at 32% (J.P. Morgan Private Bank, February 2026, p. 40).

These figures cover all phishing and breaches, AI-made or not. Read them as the risk any AI rollout lands in: every new tool adds an account to protect, and two-factor authentication is moving the wrong way.

Requests to move money by voice or video deserve a rule of their own. The family office AI policy template sets one, and the privacy and security guide covers the rest.

9. Staff, Spending and Outsourcing

The operating numbers describe the office an AI plan has to fit.

• "Approximately 62% of family offices employed six or fewer full-time professionals" (Citi Wealth, September 2026).
• RBC reports "The median IT spend of U.S. $100,000" for the offices it surveyed (RBC, September 2026, p. 32).
• "Seventy-three percent still believe investment reporting is too manual" (RBC, p. 32).
• Cybersecurity is the service offices most often outsource entirely, at 38% (J.P. Morgan Private Bank, p. 37).

Small teams, modest IT budgets and manual reporting set the starting line for most offices.

10. What the Numbers Mean for a Small Office

This section is the reading of WorkWise Solutions, which publishes this guide. The surveys report what offices said; the conclusions below are WorkWise's.

1. Start with one workflow and one owner. Smaller offices report no adoption at double the level of larger ones in Citi's data, and approximately 62% of offices have six or fewer professionals, so a plan that needs a project team will stall.
2. Train before you buy more. Lack of internal expertise heads Citi's 2025 barrier list at 57%, and BlackRock puts a lack of in-house AI expertise at 44%. A license doesn't teach anyone what to paste in and what to keep out.
3. Begin where the surveys show traction: meeting notes, research reading and reporting. With 73% of RBC's respondents calling reporting too manual and alpha creation at 4% extensive use, the paperwork is the better first bet.
4. Decide the measure before you start. In Citi's survey, 24% of respondents see no measurable impact yet, and an office that never timed a task before AI can't show a gain later.
5. Fix security first. Phishing attempts reached 59% of the offices in RBC's survey while two-factor authentication slipped to 83 percent. Turn it on for every account, and keep office data in accounts the office controls, as the privacy and security guide explains.
6. Keep the investment view and the operating plan apart. RBC's offices pick AI as a theme and expect a bubble in the same breath, and neither view says whether the office is ready to use AI itself.

Most of this costs time rather than money: one person with hours set aside, one workflow and a page of rules. The policy template gives you the page.

11. Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page comes from one of eight surveys. Here is who ran each one, who answered and when.

• Citi Wealth, 2026 Global Family Office Report, released September 22, 2026: 351 family offices in 41 countries, surveyed June to July 2026.
• Citi Wealth, 2025 Global Family Office Report, September 2025: 346 family offices in 45 countries, in a survey launched in June 2025.
• Ocorian, Family offices turn to AI but avoid investing in the sector for now, March 24, 2026: PureProfile interviewed 200 family members and full-time family office staff in 16 countries or territories in February 2026, with combined wealth of $119.37bn. Its percentages are shares of people.
• J.P. Morgan Private Bank, 2026 Global Family Office Report, February 2026: 333 single family offices in 30 countries, surveyed May to July 2025, with average net worth of $1.6bn.
• UBS, Global Family Office Report 2026, May 28, 2026: 307 family offices in 30+ markets, surveyed January 22 to March 30, 2026, with average net worth of $2.7bn.
• RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth, The North America Family Office Report 2026, September 29, 2026: 155 family offices, 123 of them in the US, with average net worth of $2.25bn.
• BlackRock with Illuminas, BlackRock Global Family Office Survey 2025, June 2025: 175 single family offices, surveyed March 17 to May 19, 2025. The release page now redirects, so the link goes to BlackRock's site.
• BNY Wealth with The Harris Poll, 2025 Investment Insights for Single Family Offices, June 2025: 282 single family offices.

Each figure appears exactly as its publisher states it, with no sums, derived percentages or extra rounding; where a report uses words such as "Half of offices," so does this page. Page numbers are those printed in the reports, and every figure was checked against the publisher's own report or release on October 28, 2026.

12. Where to Start

Use the surveys as a mirror. Answer their questions about your own office before you compare it with anyone else's.

1. Place your office on Citi's scale of no adoption, early, moderate, advanced or the top stage, counting who uses what and on which accounts.
2. Check two-factor authentication on every office and family account this week.
3. Pick one workflow from the uses with traction: meeting notes, research reading or a reporting pack.
4. Time it once before anyone uses AI on it, so you can show the change.
5. Write the rules on one page, starting from the policy template.
6. Train the people who will use it on the office's own documents, then review at 30 days.

For capital calls, statements and K-1s, the document automation guide shows where AI helps and where it must not.