Family Office Services
Family Office services are clearly established in today’s world as the optimal basis on which to bring the financial, commercial and legacy aspirations of a High Net-Worth client and his family to the market-place.
A Family Office pulls together the skills of relevant professionals and aggregates them around the needs and vision of the client, the Founder, for the short-to-long term objectives of his family. There is no ‘typical’ Family Office: it is a truly bespoke service which sets out to accomplish these generational objectives.
Our Family Office Services therefore usually comprise the direct and on-going involvement of one or more of our Partners, as well as financial, economic, legal, accounting and administrative support from within our Family Office Services Team.
Our High Net-Worth clients use a Family Office structure which will include one or more of the following services:
- Wealth advisory service
- Family financial reporting
- Tax compliance and planning
- Investment management
- Wealth transfer (estate, gift and trust planning)
- Insurance / risk management
- Family and lifestyle services
- Charitable planning and administration
- Succession planning
Each family determines which of these services is best delivered internally or through external advisors. The family generally holds annual (or more frequent) planning and reporting meetings involving our FOS Team and representatives from any other service providers.
The Family Agenda or Vision
The Family Office structure starts with an articulated set of purposes. The purposes we see often include:
- Achieving synchronicity of the Founder’s personal philosophy with the management of his wealth
- Providing for the welfare of future generations, including remoter family
- Managing the family’s asset base on the basis of a long-term investment strategy
- Sheltering wealth from potential threats and perceived risks
- Dealing with the day-to-day lifestyle needs of the Founder and his immediate family
- Implementing the Founder’s risk tolerance/risk appetite across the investment base
- Obtaining ‘best in class’ service provision at the best possible price
- Utilisation of the most sophisticated financial and legal structures available
A Family Office achieves these objectives by a variety of means and these will often include:
- Organizing the Founder’s personal and corporate financial affairs
- Optimizing the impact of taxation on the assets under management
- Working actively with his current professional advisors across a range of disciplines
- Conducting research on the current leading-edge planning strategies
- Monitoring of the legal structure and including such leading-edge planning strategies where relevant
- Creating and managing an on-going family agenda
- Taking a holistic view of the agenda and addressing issues
- Developing a divestiture strategy for private equity positions when relevant
- Achieving long-term family giving/wealth transfer goals
- Managing and evolving the existing legal, usually trust or foundation-based, structure
The Family Office agenda will also include critical but seemingly mundane issues such as:
- Evaluating investment portfolio strategy and performance
- What tax issues need to be addressed in a change of residence
- Whether one foundation is sufficient for family charitable objectives, or whether other charitable entities should be used for charitable giving
- Cash flow planning for taxes, debt reduction and venture capital commitments
- Performing a risk management review
Additional Benefits and Opportunities
- Centralisation and better control of capital, income and assets
- All professionals involved are aware of the family vision and agenda and work together in order to achieve these
- Provides unbiased, non-product motivated advice on how to allocate and diversify all assets for improved risk management and diversification
- Can use different types of governance structures to meet the family’s business needs
- Gives the HNW client more time to concentrate on achieving the vision for the family and its business
- Provides for prompt and effective dispute resolution
- Cost sharing can be achieved by the use of Multi-Family Office services
- Deals comprehensively with all issues affecting succession planning
- Provides ‘state of the market’ solutions for asset protection
Family Office Services seek to achieve an all-encompassing solution to the multi-faceted issues inherent in the lifestyle, business and personal, of the super-wealthy individual. There is therefore a premium payable for the reputational value, economic muscle and tariff-discounting power for such a HNW client, which our Family Office Services Team provides by representing the client in its relationship with financial institutions, business partners, and the HNW client’s friends and wider family.
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