Mr Liew Nam Soon, Asean Managing Partner, EY.

Distinguished speakers and guests.

Ladies and gentlemen. Good morning.

 

Thank you to EY for convening this Summit, and for choosing a theme that speaks so directly to the moment: governance, growth, and resilience.

 

In my work, I spend a great deal of time speaking with families. Through WMI’s Global-Asia Family Office Circle, a community of more than 1,600 members, we are privileged to have a close view of the questions shaping their decisions and, increasingly, their anxieties.

 

Ten years ago, those questions were largely about growth. Which markets? Which asset classes? How do we expand?

 

Those questions still matter. But they now sit alongside others that are, in many ways, even more fundamental. How do we protect what we have built? Will our assets remain accessible in times of stress? And how do we keep the family aligned, prepared, and able to carry it forward across generations in a fragmented world?

 

The ambition is still there. But today, families are building not only for returns, but for resilience.

 

We are operating in a world shaped by geopolitical fragmentation. Tensions can escalate quickly. Jurisdictions once considered stable or neutral can become exposed. A distant conflict can move oil prices, shift currencies, and disrupt supply chains.

 

Ray Dalio, one of WMI’s most distinguished faculty member, great teacher, whose work informs our investment education programmes, has expressed this in stark terms. In his view, we are already in a world war that is not going to end anytime soon, and markets are mispricing that risk, still assuming a return to the old normal. He claims that we may be in the early stages of a prolonged, interconnected breakdown of geopolitical order, monetary systems, and political institutions, all at once.

 

Others place the risk at a different point on the spectrum. But across that continuum of views, the direction is the same: the world is becoming more fragmented, less predictable, and increasingly shaped by power.

 

For families, the implications are specific. When governments come under fiscal or political strain, the greater concern may not be market volatility alone, but the possibility of sovereign action: capital controls, financial repression, sanctions exposure, asset freezes, and sudden changes in the rules of the game.

 

Resilience therefore, means building structures that can endure regime changes, not just market cycles. It means thinking carefully about where you anchor your structures, how you construct your portfolio, and whether your family has the governance to act decisively when it matters.

 

That is the backdrop. The question is: what do we do about it?

 

Building Resilience

I think about resilience for families across three connected dimensions:

First, jurisdictional resilience;

Second, portfolio resilience;

and third, family resilience.

Let me take them in turn.

 

Jurisdictional resilience is about where you anchor your family, your structures, and your decision-making. In today’s environment of heightened geopolitical tension and fragmentation, this has taken on deeper strategic significance.

 

It is no longer simply about spreading assets across markets to enhance returns. It is about ensuring continuity, access, and stability across a wide range of possible futures.

 

First, diversification must extend beyond markets to political and regulatory systems. The most forward-looking families are careful not to concentrate risk in any single geopolitical bloc. They balance exposure so that if one part of the world becomes constrained, their overall position remains secure.

 

Second, durability increasingly depends on multi-jurisdictional structuring. This means not only investing globally but also positioning wealth across different legal systems, banking relationships, and custodians to avoid single points of failure.

 

Third, although assets may be diversified globally, many families still choose to anchor themselves in a trusted base jurisdiction, one that offers stability, rule of law, and strong connectivity to global markets. What matters most is that this base provides confidence and continuity across generations.

 

Fourth, there is growing emphasis on mobility, not only of capital, but of people. Flexibility in residency, access to healthcare and education, and the ability to relocate key decision-makers have become essential elements of long-term planning.

 

Finally, families are increasingly paying closer attention to currency and financial system diversification, so that they are not overly concentrated.

 

Next, portfolio resilience is the investment dimension: how you construct and manage holdings so that no single market event, policy shock, or regime shift can seriously impair them.

 

Most of us can relate to the traditional 60/40 model was built for a different world, one in which monetary and political orders were relatively stable. That is no longer the world we inhabit. In a world of prolonged conflict, financial repression, and rising correlations, familiar forms of diversification can break down precisely in the scenarios that matter most.

 

The question is no longer which allocation maximises returns in a stable world. It is which allocation can endure the widest range of futures.

 

That means building a portfolio across genuinely different return drivers: assets that behave differently across macroeconomic environments, not merely across asset class labels.  It means stress-testing for conditions many investors have never lived through.

 

At WMI, we teach students to draw on 100 years of market history across more than 40 economies, including periods of war, financial repression, and regime change, because it is in history’s hardest episodes that resilience is truly tested.

 

Finally, the family’s resilience is what holds the first two together.

 

Jurisdictional structures and portfolio design endure only if the people governing them can adapt across generations.   Around US$6 trillion is estimated to be transferred in Asia by 2030; succession is not a side issue. It is one of the central tests of resilience.

 

Yet preparedness remains the exception rather than the norm, as only a third of families in our study reported having a formal succession plan in place.

 

From WMI’s recent research, we found families that navigate transition well start early. They give the next generation real responsibility. They build governance, trust, and shared purpose before they are forced to. Too many, however, leave these conversations too late.

 

These are not soft considerations. They are what allow a family to remain coherent under pressure, to act decisively when it matters, and to carry both wealth and purpose across generations.

 

 

Resilience by Design

Before I close, let me offer Singapore as a useful illustration of what resilience looks like when it is treated as a long-term discipline rather than a crisis response.  And there is never a better time to start.

 

Much of what we have been discussing for families also applies at the level of a nation. Resilience is not built in the moment of disruption. It is built beforehand: through diversification, strategic buffers, trusted institutions, and the discipline to prepare for more than one future.

 

Singapore has long understood this. As a small, open economy with few natural resources, it has had to reduce single points of failure wherever it can: in water, in energy, in trade, in connectivity, and in the strength of its institutions.

 

The current energy shock has made that visible. Singapore has described it as the most severe global energy disruption since the 1973 oil embargo.

 

Yet it has not had to impose fuel rationing or draw on fuel reserves. That reflects decisions made long before this crisis.

 

After 1973 lessons learnt, Singapore invested in refining capacity and bunkering infrastructure, becoming the world’s third-largest oil-trading hub and one of the largest refinery-export centres globally. Crude suppliers depend on Singapore to refine and distribute energy products, and that mutual dependence helps sustain access to diverse fuel sources even in periods of strain.

 

Singapore is also using this moment to strengthen future resilience through LNG and methanol bunkering, additional gas supply options, and the assessment of nuclear energy as a longer-term option.

 

None of this makes Singapore immune. No place is. But for families thinking carefully about where to anchor structures across generations, it offers something that matters: not certainty, but a jurisdiction that has spent decades preparing for continuity under stress.

 

Closing

In conclusion, like Singapore, families cannot stop these shifts. But they can choose how to position their family, their businesses, and their capital; what capabilities they build; and where they anchor their structures.

 

Resilience is not the absence of risk. It is preparation built over time, tested under pressure, and sustained across generations.

 

Singapore did not become resilient by reacting to a single crisis. Neither will any family. Those that will define the next chapter will not be the ones that avoided disruption, but the ones that are tested during periods of crisis, prepared for it with clarity, discipline, and shared purpose.

 

Thank you, and I wish you a fruitful Summit.