BlackRock’s 2025 Global Family Office Survey reports 68% of family offices are in “risk-management mode,” actively increasing diversification. Yet UBS’s Global Family Office Report 2025 reveals 38% cite difficulty finding the right risk offsetting strategy.
What’s behind this difficulty? At first sight, it may seem to be a matter of human resources. Goldman Sachs’ 2025 Family Office Investment Insights Report found investment teams typically number fewer than five people. These teams face the same risk complexity as larger institutions — concentration, correlation, liquidity, counterparty exposure — but without dedicated departments of professionals to back them up.
Looking deeper, though, the gap is around systematisation. With the right infrastructure, lean teams can deliver institutional-grade risk oversight without institutional-scale headcount. The right infrastructure, however, is not a better spreadsheet. Family offices know it: The 2025 RBC and Campden Wealth North America Family Office Report identifies the combination of manual processes and spreadsheet reliance as the top operational concern. They need continuous, automated monitoring that catches issues as they emerge rather than weeks after they materialise.
What Continuous Monitoring Delivers
BlackRock’s Aladdin Risk platform monitors more than 2,000 risk factors daily, from interest rates to currencies. MSCI’s AI Portfolio Insights provides anomaly detection and limits monitoring across portfolios for proactive oversight, delivering portfolio-specific insights before the working day starts.
Your Wealth, Our Priority: Altoo's Consolidation Power, Secure Document Management, and Seamless Stakeholder Sharing for High Net Worth Individuals. Preview Platform.
Such systems represent a fundamental shift from monthly risk review to daily risk surveillance. Monthly reviews capture what happened. Continuous monitoring catches what’s happening. When a portfolio breaches concentration limits (like equity exposure to a single sector climbing from 18% to 23% over three weeks) automated alerts notify portfolio managers immediately. Monthly reporting discovers the breach after the fact. Continuous monitoring prevents it from persisting.
The metrics institutions track automatically include concentration across multiple dimensions (sector, geography, single-name positions), correlation shifts between asset classes, and liquidity constraints that could limit the ability to meet obligations.
Scale, Speed, and Systematisation
Traditionally, family offices have faced a risk management trade-off: depth vs. frequency.
With a limited headcount, thorough monthly manual risk reviews may be achievable. But consider the resource mathematics: a five-person investment team spending two days monthly on comprehensive risk analysis dedicates roughly 5% of total capacity to risk review.
Automated risk monitoring doesn’t eliminate this work; it redistributes it. Technology handles data compilation and threshold tracking. Investment staff focus on strategic responses when alerts trigger.
This focus is particularly important in volatile markets. UBS’s 2025 report identifies global trade wars and major geopolitical conflicts as the biggest investment risks family offices face. The same research reveals 29% cite unpredictability of safety assets due to unstable correlations. When correlations shift unexpectedly (for example, when traditionally uncorrelated assets begin moving in tandem during market stress) monthly reviews discover problems too late. The portfolio has already experienced the correlation breakdown. Continuous monitoring catches correlation shifts as they develop.
Enabling Institutional Practices at Family Office Scale
Purpose-built technology brings institutional risk monitoring capabilities to family office scale. This technology isn’t designed to replicate every feature of systems designed for the world’s biggest asset managers. It’s designed to deliver the core capabilities that matter most:
- Real-time tracking across concentration, correlation, and liquidity parameters without manual spreadsheet updates;
- Threshold-based alerts that notify teams when portfolios breach user-defined limits;
- Visual dashboards that make complex risk data accessible to professionals without quantitative backgrounds; and
- Mobile access enabling portfolio oversight from anywhere.
The resource multiplication effect is substantial. One five-person team with automated monitoring can cover the risk surface previously requiring dedicated risk groups three times that size. Investment staff are freed from data compilation to focus on strategic decisions.
Must-Haves for Continuous Monitoring
01 Automatically consolidated portfolio data is the foundation for accurate alerting capabilities. It is impractical to monitor risk across fragmented views involving separate spreadsheets for different custodians, manual tracking of private investments, and disconnected records of real estate holdings.
02 Customisable thresholds matter because risk tolerance varies significantly across families. One family office might set sector concentration limits at 15%, another at 25%. Currency exposure thresholds depend on base currency, spending patterns, and hedging philosophy. Geographic concentration parameters reflect views on regional risk. Effective monitoring systems accommodate these differences rather than imposing standardised limits.
03 Integration with existing workflows is essential to avoid creating additional administrative burden. Alerts delivered via mobile notification or email enable immediate awareness without requiring constant platform monitoring. Dashboards accessible from tablets or phones mean risk oversight doesn’t depend on being at a desk. Documentation of alert history and responses creates institutional memory and the visibility needed to evaluate effectiveness. For example, when a portfolio implements a currency hedge or adds an alternative investment meant to provide diversification, automated tracking reveals whether correlations behave as expected.
From Periodic Review to Continuous Protection
The Altoo Wealth Platform consolidates portfolio data across custodians and asset types, creating the foundation for comprehensive risk monitoring. Automated alerts notify when allocations drift beyond family-defined thresholds for sector concentration, geographic exposure, currency risk, or asset class parameters. Visual dashboards make risk metrics accessible without requiring quantitative expertise. Exclusively Swiss-hosted infrastructure ensures the sensitive consolidated data underlying risk analysis remains secure. The result: institutional-grade risk visibility with family office-appropriate implementation.
Contact us for a demo to see how the Altoo Wealth Platform delivers the proactive monitoring your investment strategy deserves.
