Across several major family office events in 2025, Connect Group brought together hundreds of institutional investors and fund managers, with limited partners comprising roughly 70% of attendees.

What began as distinct regional conversations gradually revealed a unified pattern.

Investors weren't seeking more information. They were seeking clarity in the noise. What began as separate conversations in different cities slowly revealed itself as a unified shift in mindset. The questions being asked, the concerns being raised, and the priorities being set pointed in the same direction.

This wasn't about a single market moment or policy change.It was a recalibration in how capital allocators think about risk, relationships, and resilience.

Here's what consistently surfaced.

Returns Are Still Important, But No Longer the Starting Point

Performance matters. It always will.

But in 2025, it stopped being the opening question.

Instead, conversations began with: "How does this strategy behave under stress?"

Family offices, in particular, articulated a fundamental shift in perspective. Volatility no longer registers as cyclical. It registers as structural. That reframing has profound implications for portfolio construction, liquidity planning, and concentration risk.

Multiple allocators expressed a willingness to sacrifice upside potential in exchange for downside protection and capital durability. When evaluating general partners, the lens shifted from peak performance scenarios to stress-test outcomes. The question isn't just what a strategy delivers in ideal conditions, but how it responds when conditions deteriorate.

This represents a fundamentally different approach to due diligence.

Succession Has Moved From Planning Phase to the implementation phase

Few topics generated as much sustained discussion as succession. Not as a theoretical exercise, but as an immediate operational challenge.

The next generation is no longer waiting in the wings. They're at the table. And they often bring priorities that diverge significantly from those of founding family members. The resulting tension between legacy preservation and innovation is testing governance structures that previously functioned well.

What emerged most clearly across these conversations was how few families felt adequately prepared, regardless of wealth or sophistication.

Succession extends far beyond estate planning and wealth transfer mechanics. It encompasses decision rights, value alignment, and the preservation of institutional knowledge. Families who began this process years ago consistently emphasised the same insight: the legal and structural components are straightforward.

The challenge lies in achieving genuine alignment across generations.

Climate Investing Entered Its Pragmatic Phase

The conversation around climate-related investing underwent a notable evolution in 2025.

Allocators increasingly framed climate investment not as a values-driven allocation, but as an integrated component of risk management and portfolio resilience. Discussions are divided into two tracks: mitigation strategies aimed at reducing future climate impacts, and adaptation strategies focused on navigating impacts.

Water infrastructure, agricultural resilience, and climate-adapted real assets moved from peripheral allocations to core portfolio considerations. The shift was impossible to miss.

Equally significant was the heightened level of scrutiny. Investors pushed back on imprecise impact claims, demanded concrete evidence of scalability, and insisted on transparent discussions of trade-offs. The era of climate investing as a standalone "impact bucket" appears to be ending. Integration into broader portfolio strategy is becoming the norm.

Governance Emerged as a Critical Differentiator

A consistent refrain across LP conversations: governance failures inflict more lasting damage than market downturns.

Not always dramatic, headline-generating failures. More often, subtle erosion.

Misaligned incentives that compound over time. Decision-making processes that lack scalability. Reporting frameworks that obscure rather than illuminate.

Both family offices and institutional allocators described devoting substantially more resources to understanding actual decision-making processes, not the curated narratives presented in marketing materials. The focus has shifted to operational reality: how decisions truly get made, who holds what authority, and how conflicts get resolved.

For general partners, this shift has meaningful implications. Polished storytelling carries less weight. Transparency, consistency, and operational rigour carry more. Investors increasingly want visibility into the mechanics of the operation, not just the performance highlights.

Relationship Durability Became a Primary Selection Criterion

Capital allocators shared that they are increasingly tired of transactional fundraising and short-term partnerships.

Across multiple geographies, a clear preference emerged for managers who maintain engagement between fundraising cycles, who communicate openly during challenging periods, and who demonstrate genuine partnership orientation rather than treating relationships as purely transactional capital events.

This dynamic manifested most clearly in co-investment discussions. Access is increasingly correlated not with check size, but with relationship depth built over multiple cycles and market environments.

One limited partner captured the sentiment:

"Three excellent investments with trusted partners create more value than ten mediocre investments with unfamiliar managers."

Intentionality Replaced Activity as the Dominant Framework

Perhaps the most striking pattern across 2025: a deliberate shift toward intentionality in decision-making.

Allocators described actively slowing their pace, reducing manager relationships, and concentrating time on fewer, deeper partnerships. The objective wasn't maximising activity. It was building conviction.

This shift influenced engagement patterns at Connect Group events. Smaller, more intimate formats consistently delivered greater value than large-scale presentations. Unstructured conversations often proved more productive than formal panels. Depth trumped breadth.

One family office principal noted reducing their annual meeting schedule by 40%. "The goal isn't comprehensive market coverage," they explained. "It's developing genuine understanding with the right partners."

Looking Toward 2026

The prevailing sentiment across these conversations wasn't anxiety or paralysis. It was recalibration.

Capital allocators are adapting to an environment where uncertainty appears permanent rather than temporary. They're prioritising resilience over pure return optimisation. They're elevating governance and relationship quality in their selection criteria. They're approaching capital deployment with greater intentionality and longer time horizons.

These themes will continue shaping Connect Group's agenda throughout 2026. Expect smaller convenings, deeper engagement, and conversations focused on substance over performance theatre.

Because the consistent message across every interaction in 2025 was remarkably simple: less content, better signal. In a world characterised by noise, clarity matters more than anything else.