Leveraging the family business advantage

Leveraging the family business advantage and building resilience

More than two-thirds of family businesses around the world share a common conviction that the family ownership model makes them more resilient than their publicly listed or non-family peers. Australian family businesses are even more confident, expressing stronger belief in their resilience than the broader Asia-Pacific (ASPAC) peer group.

This confidence is well founded. The KPMG Global family business survey 2026, drawing on more than 1,900 responses across 41 countries, confirms that family businesses continue to outperform on measures of long-term resilience.

Six intrinsic value drivers underpin this advantage: shared values and purpose, family reputation and brand equity, patient capital, individual family skills, family networks and relationships, and strong governance. More than three-quarters of respondents globally rated each driver as successful or highly successful. Shared values (89%), reputation (87%) and patient capital (83%) were ranked highest. Governance and decision-making also performed strongly at 78%, but lagged the other drivers, suggesting governance must continue to evolve as businesses scale.

The data clearly shows that these advantages are not static. They evolve and shift from one generation to the next.

Key Australian insights

Australian businesses are even more confident than their ASPAC counterparts

More than two-thirds of family businesses globally believe they are more resilient than listed or non-family peers.
Six value drivers underpin this advantage

Shared values, reputation, patient capital, individual skills, family networks, and governance. In each case, more than 75% of businesses, globally, and close to 80% of Australian family businesses regarded themselves as successful in leveraging these value drivers.
Value creation shifts over time

As businesses mature across generations, value creation shifts from individual family talent to more institutional style family systems of governance, networks and processes.
Universal agreement on shared purpose

Almost all Australian businesses over 50 years old agree that shared purpose has driven value. 94% see rising importance in reputation and brand equity (55%).
Australian family businesses lag ASPAC peers on next-gen confidence (43% vs 56%)

Although confidence rises in third-generation-plus businesses to close much of this gap.
Education and mentoring build succession confidence

Deliberate, structured next-generation education and mentoring, rather than the mere passage of time, drive higher confidence in succession.

Family business resilience is not the result of tradition alone — it is built through shared purpose, disciplined governance and the ability to translate long-term values into practical decisions. The strongest families are those that treat their advantage as something to be actively renewed across generations, particularly through reputation, networks and the deliberate development of next-generation capability.

Agnes Vacca

KPMG Partner

KPMG Australia

Detailed analysis: Australian family businesses

The generational shift
Confidence in the next generation
Preparing the next generation

The generational shift

Australian data illustrates this arc vividly. Among businesses over 50 years old, 100% agree that a shared purpose has been a key driver of value, and 94% see family reputation and brand equity growing in importance as the business transitions across generations. Fiscal prudence – the compounding benefit of patient capital – is also recognised as an enduring strength.

At the same time, the importance attached to individual family members’ skills declines over time. The global data tells the same story: among businesses over 100 years old, ratings for individual family skills fall to 67%, against an 81% global average, and family networks fall to 66%, against 80%. As businesses mature across generations, competitive advantage shifts from the personal influence of family members to durable structures such as governance structures, processes and systems that can outlast any one individual. It is the family as a collective, not the individual, that increasingly carries the business forward.

Confidence in the next generation

Despite this pattern of strengthening structural resilience, Australian family businesses show more caution than their global and ASPAC peers about next-generation readiness. Of the Australian respondents, 7% say they have no confidence at all in the next generation’s readiness, compared with just 1% globally. High confidence is also less common in Australia (43%) than across the ASPAC region excluding Australia (56%).

Generational maturity, however, closes this gap. Australian third-generation plus businesses report markedly 'higher' confidence then of first or second-generation businesses, 54% versus 38%.

How are Australian family businesses preparing the next generation?

What explains this? Deliberate investment in next-generation development. Third-generation-plus Australian businesses place far greater emphasis on formal education, both external and internal, at 63% versus 31% for first-generation and second-generation businesses, and on structured mentoring, at 69% versus 51%.

The global survey reinforces this pattern: while 60% of family businesses worldwide already provide on-the-job learning and half offer some form of mentoring, only 37% run targeted in-house development programs, although 40% plan to introduce mentoring and 43% are considering formal third-party programs over the next three years.

Key takeaways

Resilience compounds with generational maturity, but it must be built deliberately; it is not automatic.
As businesses age, value creation shifts from individual talent to institutional systems: governance, networks and processes.
Confidence in next-generation leadership tracks directly with the intentionality of investment in next-generation development, not simply the passage of time.
Australia’s lower confidence in next-generation readiness, compared with ASPAC and global peers, points to an opportunity rather than a weakness and one that, as more established peers show, can be closed over time.

Actions to build resilience and value

The lesson for Australian family businesses from the 2026 KPMG survey is consistent and clear. Family businesses that professionalise deliberately, reinforcing shared values while building durable systems around them, convert the family advantage into resilience that compounds across generations.

Formalise next-generation education early. Combine external qualifications (e.g. MBA-style courses) with structured, in-house development programs, rather than relying on informal, on-the-job exposure alone.
Establish mentoring structures that pair experienced family and non-family leaders with next-generation members well before any transition is imminent.
Codify governance, decision rights, family constitutions, and clear separation of ownership, governance and management, to protect shared purpose and reputation as authority broadens beyond any single leader.
Treat succession as a multi-year program, not a singular event, with capability assessment and development beginning at least a decade ahead of any planned transition.
Benchmark next-generation readiness periodically against ASPAC and global peers to track whether development investment is closing the confidence gap over time.

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