Hong Kong spent 16 September telling the market what it wants to be for the rest of the decade. The first Economic and Social Development Plan for 2026–2030, issued with the Policy Address, names the city as a cross-border wealth centre that will service global sovereign funds and family offices, “optimise” tax treatment of funds, single family offices and carried interest, and pull more international and mainland family capital onshore. It also wants more product depth in alternative funds and REITs. That is a political allocation of attention. It is dated this week. It is not a statute.

The statute that would give multi-asset family books more room is the Inland Revenue (Amendment) Bill 2026, gazetted on 12 June and introduced to LegCo later that month. The clauses that matter for a CIO inside an FIHV are the wider list of qualifying investments, the removal of the incidental-transaction cap that punished anything sitting outside the old schedule, and the change in how the minimum asset test is counted so shareholder loans stop shrinking the total. As of early September the bill was still at committee stage, with the government aiming to resume second reading in the second half of 2026. IRD has said 2025/26 returns may be filed as if the amendments apply. That is a filing convenience. It is not royal assent.

The distinction is the whole piece. Families and private banks price substance, staff and tax certainty. A five-year plan can move marketing and, eventually, legislative priority. It cannot today deliver the extra flexibility the bill describes. Anyone writing that Hong Kong “has reformed FIHV this week” has collapsed the plan into the ordinance.

Singapore is the control. The MAS single-family-office class exemption took effect on 15 June 2026: notification within 14 days, annual return, family capital only, structure-agnostic. Existing SFOs have until 15 June 2027 to migrate. 13O and 13U remain the tax layer, with their AUM floors, local staff and local spend, and the capital-deployment rule. That stack is live. A family that can choose a city is still comparing current Hong Kong FIHV law plus a plan and a bill with live Singapore licensing plus existing tax schemes. The Policy Address does not close that comparison.

Citi’s Asia Pacific Family Office Executive Forum in Hong Kong on 14 September brought more than 150 principals under the heading “The Intelligence Decade: AI, Capital and the New Asian Order,” with Bruce Flatt and Jean Eric Salata on the programme. That is useful as a gathering. It is not an allocation print and it does not enact a tax clause.

For a private-bank CIO or a family-office counsel the operational read is therefore conservative. Hong Kong has put FO and SWF service into the official decade. The legal upgrade that would make a multi-asset FIHV cleaner is queued. Singapore has already finished its licensing tidy-up. Capital that needs the new Hong Kong flexibility this quarter does not yet have it. Capital that needed a notification SFO in Singapore already does.

The plan’s line on alternatives and REITs is the product hook for managers, not a required weight inside 13O or FIHV. No official text this week set a gold, PE or private-credit floor for family vehicles. Houses that attach a 7 per cent metals number or a 40 per cent alts number to the Policy Address are writing their own appendix.