Building the next APAC portfolio

APAC’s private-wealth landscape is shifting fast. Ultra-high-net-worth growth, rising cross-border flows, and a renewed appetite for returns are changing how portfolios are built and risk is managed across the region. Bloomberg Intelligence’s September 2025 Asia Private Wealth Survey, which sought the viewpoints of 100 senior private-wealth professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore, captures this turn clearly: investors are moving up the risk curve, rotating geographies, and elevating alternatives from peripheral to core.

Risk appetite is rising across Asia

Half of all respondents report their clients now have a “higher” (42%) or “much higher” (8%) risk appetite than a year ago, indicating a structural re-risking across the region.

Several forces are driving this shift. Asia is creating ultra-high-net-worth individuals faster than any other region, expanding the pool of capital competing for growth. The survey finds that rising affluence and the need to diversify amid geopolitical uncertainty are key contributors, prompting both institutional and wealthy investors to broaden their asset-class mix and regional allocations.

Intergenerational change is amplifying these trends. While baby boomers still dominate AUM, younger heirs exhibit a distinctly different investment approach — one that prizes diversification, innovation, and long-term growth. Their influence is reinforcing a higher tolerance for risk, as newer decision-makers show greater openness to growth-oriented opportunities.

Easing recession fears, peaking interest rates, and China’s pro-growth policy signals are further improving the regional sentiment. Taken together, these forces point to a clear recalibration in the APAC investor mindset: from prioritizing capital preservation toward a more considered appetite for growth.

Where is the money going?

Greater China is back in favor

Greater China is re-establishing itself as the strategic anchor for APAC portfolios. The survey shows that the bloc already represents an average of 27% of AUM — more than twice North America’s share — with 81% of respondents expecting to “increase” or “significantly increase” exposure over the next year.

The shift is underpinned by a combination of valuation reset, improving market stability, and clearer policy direction. China’s $4B dollar-bond sale in early November drew about $118B of orders and priced at or near Treasuries, signaling revived demand for China risk. Chinese tech stocks have climbed to four-year highs, while the yuan has strengthened year-to-date.

Policy developments are strengthening the structural case. China’s forthcoming 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) emphasizes expanding domestic demand by boosting household incomes and supporting consumption, alongside upgrading manufacturing. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates the latest consumer-support measures could unlock over 1.2 trillion yuan of spending, reinforcing consumption’s role in growth.

Together, attractive valuations, firmer policy signals, and expanding market access have re-established Greater China as a core feature of growth-oriented portfolios across APAC.

The alternatives boom

The asset mix is evolving with risk appetite. BI’s survey shows that 69% of respondents plan to increase exposure to equities, while 68% and 67% expect to raise allocations to private equity and digital assets, respectively. Alternatives are moving to the center of return generation and risk diversification.

This shift is client-led. With macro uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and stretched public-market valuations testing the resilience of traditional holdings, investors are diversifying into assets that can offer higher yield premia and uncorrelated returns.

Investor risk appetite has risen, with clients expected to increase exposure to private equity, digital assets, and hedge funds. Proposed rules to open private markets to retail investors would further support alternatives.

Asia’s private-wealth allocators are shifting their mix as risk appetite rises. Half of the respondents say client risk appetite is higher than a year ago, and over two-thirds plan to increase allocations to equities, private equity and digital assets over the next 12 months. Respondents rank taxes, rates, market volatility, liquidity and geopolitics among the most impactful forces on decisions, while technology and new products are seen as key drivers of net-new money.

Cross-border access is widening as well: Hong Kong and Singapore are expected to be the fastest-growing global booking hubs, with cross-border wealth in both projected to expand ~12% annually over the next five years. The result is a client-led tilt toward growth assets, including alternatives.

The problem this creates

The rapid shift toward illiquid private assets, digital exposures, and deeper allocations to relatively opaque geographies has introduced a new portfolio — one whose complexity exceeds the capabilities of legacy solutions built around liquid public-market holdings. The survey captures this strain clearly: 55% of respondents cite “difficulty tracking illiquid/private assets” as their second-largest investment workflow inefficiency.

The core issue is fragmentation resulting from siloed workflows and disconnected data systems assembled over decades. Each platform ingests its own datasets on its own timetable, producing inconsistent views of positions and exposures and forcing teams into heavy manual reconciliation.

Legacy solutions, designed for liquid, transparent markets, struggle with capital-call cycles, valuation lags, bespoke terms, incomplete datasets, and heterogeneous information sources that define modern private and digital assets. As allocations rise, CIOs are effectively being asked to manage multi-asset, multi-custody portfolios that require a unified, enterprise-level view of risk and exposure — a level of integration legacy infrastructure struggles to deliver.

The Bloomberg solution

Building the new APAC portfolio requires an operating model where private markets, digital assets, and cross-border flows sit seamlessly alongside traditional holdings. This demands centralized data, standardized workflows, and cross-asset analytics that assess risk consistently across public and private exposures.

Bloomberg’s data and analytics infrastructure are built for this reality. By unifying data sources, providing transparency on illiquid assets, and supporting consistent enterprise-level modeling, it enables CIOs to model, analyze, and manage risk through a single, coherent lens.

Workflow integration is essential. Portfolio, risk, and advisory teams need a shared, accurate view of positions, liquidity, and valuation drivers. Delivering this requires a unified foundation that scales across custodians, markets, and valuation frameworks — the type of consolidated architecture Bloomberg equips firms with.

The outcome is practical: faster decisions, better client conversations, and tighter control of portfolio risk as APAC private wealth leans further into growth, alternatives, and cross-border opportunities.