\u201cThe first time ever in my career, that I hear U.S. clients wanted to book their assets outside of the U.S.,\u201d Darlene Patterson, Global Head of Client Solutions at Citi Wealth, told Fortune<\/em> in a recent interview. Patterson, who leads a team formed specifically to address clients\u2019 cross-border needs holistically across Citi\u2019s business lines and geographies, distinguished this movement from outright expatriation, pushing back on narratives \u2014 like the one surrounding actor George Clooney\u2019s French citizenship \u2014 that framed wealthy Americans as abandoning the country entirely. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call it completely leaving the U.S., in my opinion,\u201d she said, adding that clients are \u201cnot necessarily expatriating from the U.S. either.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, she described a pursuit of \u201coptionality\u201d: wealthy Americans obtaining additional residencies or golden visas in Italy, Portugal, Jersey in the Channel Islands, Australia and New Zealand. \u201cThey\u2019re just looking for more lifestyle enhancement, optionality,\u201d Patterson said, noting clients are \u201csomewhat concerned about policy risk in this country.\u201d That\u2019s a key driver that can\u2019t be underestimated, she said: the desire for a \u201cstable, consistent political environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Patterson\u2019s perspective is informed by her own cross-border life. Born and raised in Beijing, she spent the early part of her private banking career in Hong Kong before eventually settling in the U.S. and joining Citi roughly five years ago. She has watched Hong Kong itself transform from a regional hub into a genuinely global one, telling Fortune<\/em> that the city almost competes for capital with Singapore in \u201ca little bit of a regional local rivalry\u201d that increasingly arrives not just from mainland China and Canada \u2014 a legacy of the 1997 handover-era exodus \u2014 but from Latin America and the Middle East as well. That vantage point, she suggested, is part of why the current American shift feels so novel to her: Citi also maintains an internal \u201ccorridor monitor\u201d that tracks live client data on where money is moving, giving her team real-time visibility into wealth flows beyond published industry research.<\/p>\n Patterson isn\u2019t alone in her field in describing this as unprecedented. Nuri Katz of Apex Capital Partners, an immigration consultant who has spent decades relocating the world\u2019s ultra-rich \u2014 including helping wealthy Chinese families move to Canada in an earlier era \u2014 told Fortune<\/em> several weeks ago that Americans are his highest-growing market. In an echo of Patterson, he said, \u201cI\u2019ve never seen that before.\u201d<\/p>\n Patterson\u2019s comments accompanied Citi Wealth\u2019s recent Wealth Beyond Borders<\/em> report, which frames geographic location \u2014 not just asset allocation \u2014 as an emerging pillar of portfolio diversification. The report projects that a cumulative $3.06 trillion will shift into five leading financial hubs \u2014 Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, the UAE and the US \u2014 between 2025 and 2029, citing BCG\u2019s Global Wealth Report 2025. (Asia is a major player, with Hong Kong and Singapore alone seen capturing more than half of these flows.) <\/p>\n The report identifies three drivers behind this mobility: enhancing family lifestyle, pursuing business and portfolio growth, and increasing wealth resilience against policy or sovereign risk.<\/p>\n That resilience motive echoes directly in Patterson\u2019s remarks about American clients\u2019 policy concerns, and the report explicitly warns that \u201ctax regimes may shift suddenly in adverse ways\u201d and that \u201cin an extreme scenario, full or partial state confiscation may be a factor\u201d in weaker rule-of-law environments \u2014 underscoring why predictable, property-rights-respecting jurisdictions have grown more attractive even to Americans. Separately, the UBS Global Family Office report found only a few months ago that wealthy families were planning to shift portfolios away from the U.S., citing fears of an AI bubble, tariffs, a weakening dollar and volatile economic policy.<\/p>\n This shift has been underway since the pandemic, with inquiries from wealthy Americans about golden visa and citizenship-by-investment programs surging by more than 500% over five years to 2024, with Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain as top destinations \u2014 nearly the same list of countries Patterson still cites. One migration consultant told Fortune<\/em> at the time that wealthy Americans were \u201chedging their bets.\u201d<\/p>\n More recently, Henley & Partners\u2019 2026 Wealth Migration Report found wealthy Americans are now among the most active people globally in acquiring residency or citizenship abroad. Notably, the firm found many are \u201ckeeping their wealth at home\u201d even as they secure a foreign foothold, a nuance that supports Patterson\u2019s findings as well \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s about optionality, not a full departure.<\/p>\n The trend isn\u2019t confined to Citi\u2019s client book. CNBC<\/em> reported in May 2026 that 60% of family offices surveyed by UBS planned to make strategic changes to their asset allocation over the next year \u2014 roughly double the level of the prior five years, and the highest UBS has recorded \u2014 with many trimming U.S. dollar exposure amid fears of an AI bubble, tariffs, a weakening dollar and volatile economic policy, the so-called \u201cde-dollarization trade.\u201d Nearly 30% said they had cut or were considering cutting their dollar-denominated holdings. Tellingly, the pullback was concentrated outside the U.S.: American family offices actually raised their home-country allocation from 86% to 88%, reinforcing Patterson\u2019s point that this is diversification rather than flight \u2014 an industry-wide phenomenon rather than an artifact of one bank\u2019s client base.<\/p>\n Patterson\u2019s observations were reinforced by a separate conversation with Richard Weintraub, who runs Citi\u2019s family office business across North America and Latin America, covering roughly 2,000 family offices globally with an average net worth exceeding $2 billion. Weintraub noted that newly created U.S. wealth is increasingly requesting international booking options as a matter of course. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing in general is the ability for these very wealthy individuals to invest beyond their borders. To use the large institutions like ours, frankly, to help them find opportunities in other regions, developed or emerging.\u201d<\/p>\n As Patterson described it, \u201cthese new billionaires\u2026 are all asking, \u2018Hey, Citi, you are global. Can I have my assets booked in Switzerland, for example? Can I open accounts in Singapore? These are the new generation of questions that we\u2019re seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n Weintraub also described a broader family-office trend toward illiquidity and diversification beyond domestic borders: Citi\u2019s annual survey of 346 family offices found that 70% now participate in direct private investments, with 40% saying they increased that activity over the past year.<\/p>\n Patterson emphasized that this wealth mobility is deliberate rather than incidental. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing among the client base is very intentional,\u201d she said, contrasting it with older \u201coffshore trust, set it, forget about it\u201d approaches she said have \u201creally been very much left in the old days.\u201d The Citi report similarly stresses that strategic asset location is \u201cnot merely a defensive measure\u201d but \u201ca proactive strategy to enhance wealth resilience,\u201d requiring ongoing coordination across jurisdictions rather than a one-time move.<\/p>\n Still, both executives affirmed that America\u2019s fundamental appeal endures. Patterson said geopolitically sensitive regions continue shifting capital into the U.S. \u201cbecause of our rule of law\u2026 and our established and very vibrant capital markets,\u201d pointing to renewed interest from Middle Eastern families following the Iran conflict. The Citi report backs this up: the US holds roughly a third of global liquid investable wealth and is home to 37% of the world\u2019s millionaires.<\/p>\n . The dynamic, in other words, isn\u2019t American capital fleeing \u2014 it\u2019s the ultrawealthy, at home and abroad, refusing to keep all their eggs in one jurisdictional basket.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #time #career #Senior #Citi #executive #ultrawealthy #diversify #America<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wealthy American families are increasingly seeking to book assets outside the United States \u2014 a shift so pronounced that one of Citi\u2019s top wealth executives says she\u2019s never seen anything… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[867,2376,922,7279,3249,332,3470,14,2437,81],"class_list":["post-11701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-america","tag-career","tag-citi","tag-citigroup","tag-diversify","tag-executive","tag-senior","tag-time","tag-ultrawealthy","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A $3 trillion global reshuffling<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/citi.png?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nNew wealth wants global exposure <\/h2>\n
Intentional, not casual<\/h2>\n