Analysis of the private fund market: 570 structures, 100 million ruble threshold, differences from wills. How asset transfer to heirs works and what gaps exist in practice.
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Russia's market for private funds—designed to manage substantial private wealth and facilitate intergenerational transfers—is expanding. In 2025, 365 such structures were registered. By April 8, 2026, the Unified State Register of Legal Entities listed more than 570 private funds.
Meanwhile, since 2018, only three hereditary funds have been established in Russia, one of which has already been liquidated. The number of private funds is growing significantly faster than the practice of operating them after the capital owner's death.
From wills to separate structures
A private fund is a separate legal entity to which the owner transfers assets during their lifetime for preservation, management, and subsequent distribution to beneficiaries according to pre-established rules.
It allows the capital owner to remove assets from their personal ownership in advance and transfer them to a separate legal entity. The fund can receive shares in companies, stocks, real estate, and other assets. After the founder's death, the fund continues to exist, and the property transferred to it does not form part of the estate.
Creating a private fund requires assets worth at least 100 million rubles. However, as attorneySvetlana Fomina notes, the legislation does not establish a specific timeframe within which these assets must be transferred to the fund after its establishment. This is one of the gaps in the legislation, the answer to which remains at the founder's discretion for now.
For businesses, this structure allows management issues to be resolved in advance. Under ordinary inheritance, time passes between the owner's death and the estate's formalization, and heirs still need to reach agreement on the company's future. With a fund, however, assets are already held in a separate structure that continues to operate independently of the founder's death.
"If the founder dies, nothing changes: the fund remains legally capable just as it was. It continues to operate, asset management continues, meaning the business functions without any interruption."
According to Evgeny Karkaus, managing partner at EKM LEGAL, a fund differs from a will in that it allows for the simultaneous resolution of both corporate and inheritance matters.
"A personal fund, in turn, is a comprehensive instrument that enables the simultaneous resolution of both corporate and inheritance matters—during the founder's lifetime as well as after their death."
This is precisely why a personal fund cannot be viewed merely as a complicated will. It allows the owner to determine during their lifetime who will manage the assets, who will be the beneficiary, and under what conditions distributions will be made. In some cases, these conditions may be tied to age, education, income, or other circumstances.
Registrations growing faster than practice
The first personal funds appeared on the market in the early 2020s. In 2022, there were 4 funds; in 2023, 13. In 2024, there was a sharp jump—to 135–137 registrations. In 2025, ALRUD counted 365 new funds, while Svinin & Partners Management Company counted 409. The bulk of the market emerged quite recently. About 65% of funds in existence as of April 2026 were registered during 2025 alone.
The regional breakdown shows that the instrument remains a product for large private capital. Moscow and Moscow Region accounted for 342 funds, while St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region had 69. Together, the two metropolitan areas concentrated about 73% of the market. Sverdlovsk Region had 21 funds, Krasnodar Territory 18, and Tatarstan 17.
The 100 million ruble threshold itself limits the potential audience. According to an ALRUD survey, 26% of asset owners who participated had wealth ranging from 1 billion to 10 billion rubles, while another 32% had more than 10 billion rubles. Meanwhile, 37% of respondents had already created a personal fund. The survey cannot be considered representative of all wealthy Russians, but it does show the audience for which the instrument is intended.
The fund becomes part of the business
The market's first years show that owners are using personal funds primarily as an active capital management mechanism. According to public data from the Federal Tax Service and SPARK, 108 funds, or 19% of the total, owned stakes in limited liability companies. Collectively, these funds held equity in 232 companies. In 130 of them, the fund's stake ranged from 80% to 100%, and in another 27, from 40% to 80%.
At the same time, information about stakes in limited liability companies was absent for 114 funds, or roughly 20% of the market. Therefore, the actual scale of fund participation in business may be higher.
The share of funds participating in limited liability companies declined from 29% a year earlier to 19%. This may be related to a shift in the structure of new registrations: funds are entering the market into which cash, real estate, shares in joint-stock companies, and intellectual property are being transferred.
The question of how professionally these structures are managed also remains. In 82% of personal funds, the sole executive body is an individual, while a management company is used in only 16% of cases. The Unified State Register of Legal Entities lists 44 management companies.
As Evgeny Karkaus notes, the governance structure becomes one of the central issues even at the fund creation stage.
"The most important thing is to define the fund's management mechanism (changes to governing bodies and their powers; founders often think through a system of checks and balances, especially if they anticipate possible conflicts), as well as clearly define either the list of fund beneficiaries or the mechanism for determining them."
In other words, the owner must design in advance not only the fate of the assets but also the internal decision-making system. This is especially important for family businesses, where after the founder's death, heirs' interests may diverge.
Demand has shifted toward succession
The motives for creating funds are changing as the market develops. In 2025, 33% of surveyed founders included tax optimization among their three key objectives. In the 2026 survey among those who had already established funds, not a single respondent named this motive as key.
On the other hand, 86% of study participants reported that the fund helped solve the estate planning challenge. 57% believe the fund ensures asset management after the founder's death and financial security for the family, as well as protects assets from external factors.
Among those only considering fund creation, 42% each cited economic instability and asset protection from third-party claims among their motives, while another 17% pointed to sanctions risks.
Thus, demand is shaped by several factors simultaneously. For some owners, it's about protecting the business from disruption during the probate period; for others, preserving family assets; for still others, confidentiality and capital protection.
Since August 2024, information about personal fund founders may not be disclosed. This further limits the ability to assess the market structure and the ratio of individual to joint funds.
A separate scenario involves family assets. A fund can be used, for example, to preserve real estate or ancestral property from sale immediately after the owner's death. The founder can determine in advance the circle of beneficiaries, the payment schedule, and the period during which the asset must be preserved unchanged.
At the same time, creating a fund does not prevent all family risks. Svetlana Fomina draws attention to situations involving jointly acquired property and spousal divorce.
"For now, we can only say that a personal fund certainly solves some problems—with succession, with capital protection if that was the founder's goal—but at the same time, a personal fund does not solve family problems and may even exacerbate them to some degree."
For this new institution, it's a matter of principle: transferring assets to a fund allows one to determine their future fate in advance, but simultaneously creates new questions if the founder's family circumstances change.
The main gap begins after death
The most telling market figure isn't the 570 private funds, but rather the three inheritance funds created since 2018. One of them was liquidated in 2023. In other words, the mechanism that's supposed to work precisely after the owner's death has seen almost no practical adoption over eight years.
The reason lies partly in the structure itself. An inheritance fund is created after the testator's death. During their lifetime, the owner cannot test how their future management structure will work, who exactly will make decisions, and how precisely their will shall be executed.
A private fund has an advantage here: the founder creates it themselves and can observe how the structure operates while still alive.
"Now this private fund, it allows a person during their lifetime to build out the entire system and, well, you know, let me put it this way, rehearse this whole structure while they're still alive. But doing this after death is problematic. A person has no guarantees that their will shall be carried out."
Therefore, the small number of inheritance funds doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of interest in the idea itself. Rather, owners of substantial capital prefer to create a functioning structure in advance and transfer assets to it while still alive.
For the market, this simultaneously presents a problem: there are almost no cases yet on which to test the Russian model in its most complex scenario—after the founder's death and the emergence of disagreements among heirs.
Case law is still catching up with the market
The number of public court cases involving private funds is growing. ALRUD identified 7 such cases in 2023–2024 and 23 cases in 2025–2026. But the substance of the disputes so far suggests an early stage of institutional development.
About 40% of proceedings involved tax disputes, 32% property disputes, 14% liquidation cases, and 7% contractual disputes. Complex conflicts around heirs, beneficiaries, and control over funds are virtually absent from public practice so far.
Therefore, current court cases don't yet allow us to answer the central question: how will courts adjudicate conflicts between a founder's predetermined will and the interests of heirs after their death.
According to Evgeny Karkaus, legislative uncertainty remains one of the key limitations of this new instrument.
"The personal foundation instrument is quite new, and not all details of its operation have been tested in practice yet, including by the courts. Meanwhile, enforcement practice often significantly affects the attractiveness and effectiveness of legal institutions."
Svetlana Fomina provides another example. The law requires contributing cash or property worth at least 100 million rubles to the foundation, but does not establish a minimum asset balance that the foundation must maintain permanently. Therefore, the question remains: what happens if an asset worth 100 million rubles is first transferred to the foundation and then withdrawn from it?
According to her, such gaps are particularly noticeable because the mechanism has only existed since 2022, and four years is a short period for developing substantial case law.
"There is very little case law, and it cannot be called established, since the people who are currently founders of personal foundations are alive and well. Only time will tell how successful the personal foundation has proven to be as a family and estate planning tool."
Heirs will have to live by the foundation's rules
After the founder's death, much depends on how thoroughly the management system was structured in advance. Heirs may be beneficiaries of the foundation, but the foundation's assets themselves do not automatically become their property.
For those included among the beneficiaries, the scope of rights is largely determined by the charter and management terms. This may include the right to receive information, initiate audits, demand changes in management bodies, or in certain cases raise the question of liquidating the foundation.
Evgeny Karkaus notes:
"Much of the heirs' rights is determined by the foundation's charter. The legislation primarily provides a basic level of guarantees (for example, the requirement to conduct audits, the potential ability to recover damages / demand changes in management bodies, as well as the possibility of demanding liquidation in case of an actual deadlock)."
The situation is more difficult for those heirs whom the founder did not include among the beneficiaries. They may attempt to challenge the creation of the foundation or actions to transfer assets, but if the assets were legally transferred during the founder's lifetime, they are no longer part of the estate.
At the same time, the foundation has another fundamental limitation: after the founder's death, it is impossible to change the charter and management terms through normal procedures. Standard reorganization is also impossible. For business and family capital, this creates a separate risk: rules that seemed appropriate when creating the foundation may cease to fit the circumstances after several years.
The Cost of Uncertainty
Financial disclosures for these funds remain limited. According to ALRUD data, only 12% of structures make their reporting publicly available. Among those that do, average net assets stood at approximately 6.3 billion rubles, though the range was enormous—from negative values to 89 billion rubles.
These figures can't be extrapolated across the entire market: the sample is too small, and large structures significantly skew the average. But the data does show that even with a relatively modest number of registered funds, we're talking about substantial pools of capital.
The choice of management model is also telling. Some 82% of funds are still managed by individuals, with only 16% overseen by professional management companies. For a market aspiring to become long-term infrastructure for private capital, this suggests the professional framework is still taking shape.
At the same time, the instrument itself gives the owner far more flexibility than a standard will. You can designate beneficiaries, determine payment schedules, define the powers of governing bodies, and set conditions for receiving funds. But the more complex the structure, the more questions arise about how accurately courts and regulators will be able to interpret it years down the line.
Russia's Trust Equivalent Is Still Proving Itself
In Western jurisdictions, trust structures have evolved over centuries and accumulated substantial judicial and management precedent. Russian personal funds have existed for only a few years. So comparing them today makes more sense not by the number of registered structures, but by the depth of practice.
The Russian market has already passed the stage of proving demand. But the main test still lies ahead. Public case law so far has dealt mostly with tax, property, and technical issues. The first major wave of disputes over heirs, beneficiaries, and the execution of a deceased founder's wishes has yet to materialize.
For capital owners, this means a personal fund can already be used as a tool for long-term asset management, but many of the consequences of how it will function after the owner's death must still be anticipated based on legislation, expert practice, and carefully drafted terms. As Evgeny Karkaus puts it:
"The fate of a personal fund's assets after the founder's death depends directly on the provisions laid out in the fund's documents. That's why quality preparation becomes a serious opportunity to avoid uncertainty."
Russia's personal fund market is therefore growing in two directions at once. On one hand, the number of registrations is rising and the range of tasks that capital owners assign to such structures is expanding. On the other, legal practice is only beginning to test how resilient this structure will prove in real inheritance disputes.
