The proof-of-concept role

Michael Macfarlane opened the Wealth Office series with a historical observation. Wealth, he argued, has always followed geopolitics, and each age expresses it differently. In his account the present is the era of the family office, with wealth flowing into innovations and technologies of vast potential impact. Several guests have since described what that looks like in practice, and a common thread runs through their answers. They see private capital as able to act before public systems are ready.

Allen Law makes the case most directly. He frames the longevity opportunity around a gap of about nine years between lifespan and healthspan, and argues that health systems built on treating sickness cannot keep paying for longer years in poor health. Most governments, in his view, are constrained by existing models and fear that more preventive care means less sick care. Singapore has made small investments that raise awareness, but mass adoption has not followed. His response is Morrow, a chain of lifestyle medical centres backed by a US$156 million commitment, intended as a working model for others to follow and a nudge for governments to invest more in prevention. He has also launched a US$70 million venture fund for early-stage companies that can extend healthspan, especially in Asia, where he sees a funding gap.

Law does not present this as charity. He describes a calculated balance, with part of his family's wealth in a traditional set-up built on asset allocation and diversification, and a separate pool for unproven, early-stage bets. Some of those bets promise financial upside. Others, he says, are made partly because they could help many people.

But how do we grow wealth at the same time creating impact in the society? I think if you can find this three way approach to your investment, that's the best.

— Allen Law, Wealth Office

Patience as a competitive advantage

Maryann Selfe reaches a similar conclusion from another corner of the healthcare market. As a healthcare investor and author of The Billion Dollar Blindspot, she traces how women came to be excluded from clinical trials and how the resulting data gap became self-reinforcing. Without sex-specific data there is no precedent, without precedent there is no reimbursement, and without reimbursement capital does not follow. She calls it a systems design issue, and argues that a system designed incorrectly creates the conditions for a market correction.

Her view of who should fund that correction is specific. Healthcare value, in her account, rises at each inflection point from laboratory idea to regulatory approval, with the largest gains between seed and Series A or B. Institutions and pension funds are rarely present at that stage. Because the opportunities sit in scientific and medical innovation with long development timelines, she sees long-duration, flexible family capital as well suited to them, particularly from Asia, and points to Europe's comparatively shallow biotech funding as a cross-border opening.

So it's not if the capital will flow into building solutions for the future of health care for all. It is as a capital allocator, what side of that trade do you want to be on?

— Maryann Selfe, Wealth Office

Marco Poon, a third-generation member of a major Hong Kong business-owning family, describes the same advantage in more general terms. Families, he says, may have no fixed investment horizon at all, which suits startups and industries that take a long time to grow. His example is infrastructure, where construction alone can take years and the benefits extend over decades. He sees a global need to overhaul power grids to meet the energy demands of AI, and points to grid modernisation, including in Japan, as a large opportunity. In his account, the clock a family runs on is itself a form of capital that institutions find hard to match.

From cash generation to purpose

Nicolas de Santis, co-founder of Opodo, pushes the argument further. He offers families two lenses for new ventures. The first is to look at the world's great challenges, such as longevity, because solving them creates large industries. The second is disruptive innovation, either improving what exists or creating something without precedent. His Planetary Futures work describes three trajectories, maximum human potential, stagnation and self-destruction, and he stresses that all three are visible today and all use technology. He suggests that some families own businesses still generating cash but no longer fit for purpose, and could direct future investment towards challenges they can help solve.

For de Santis, the discipline that makes this possible is visioneering, the ability to explore and create the future using imagination and even science fiction narratives. In his experience, family strategy meetings rarely look far enough ahead. Scale of ambition matters to him as much as direction.

So I believe that even if you say I'm thinking big, think much bigger. Because the dimension of what you want to build will then dictate the ambition of your challenge.

— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office

The limits guests acknowledge

None of these guests treats private capital as a substitute for the state. Law wants governments to follow his proof of concept. Selfe describes a problem of systems design that runs through trial data and insurance reimbursement as much as through capital, and sees the wealth transfer as a multi-decade process that will accelerate the correction. De Santis argues for a new level of cooperative global governance, which he distinguishes sharply from global government, to pursue shared goals such as curing cancer and Alzheimer's and ending hunger. Poon pairs his view of patient family capital with the observation that China's progress in AI, automation and new energy came from a clear national plan, energy infrastructure built in advance and government backing combined with enterprise effort.

Law is also candid about the trade-offs within family capital itself. Family support opens doors through networks and connections, he says, but it can become a hindrance if family members disagree on risk and reward. Institutional money avoids that baggage while imposing pressure to grow fast and exit within set timeframes. The best outcome, he suggests, comes from balancing the two.

What emerges across these conversations is a role defined by timing more than by size. Private capital, as these guests describe it, is most useful where evidence is thin, horizons are long and public systems are still deciding. Macfarlane's framing of the series, wealth as less about opulence and more about impact, finds its most practical expression here. The common ground is patience, together with a willingness to build something others can copy.