What is a family office?
A family office is a private consultancy firm that offers wealth management services to investors who have high net worth.
They differ from regular wealth management agencies in that they bring a totally outsourced approach of managing the investment and financial aspects of an affluent family or party. Most family offices provide insurance, budgeting, tax services, and wealth transfer for their clients.
What is the role of family offices?
They offer a complete solution for all financial matters that need to be taken care of. Other non-financial needs included travel arrangements, private schooling and assorted household activities and needs.
Generally, they work under two principles. They may be multi-family or single-family offices. Single-family offices manage the affairs of one affluent family while multi-family agencies deal with many clients. The ability of the multi-family agency to serve many families makes it enjoy economies of scale. This advantage makes the arrangement to be favored by many agencies.
Types of jobs in a family office
The services of a family office cannot be provided by one professional. To manage the affairs of an ultra-high net-worth family, a harmonized team of insurance, business, real-estate, legal, tax and investment experts is required. The essential elements that ensure prosperity come from the team hired to perform specific tasks. Most common jobs in a family office include:
Legal experts
As a family seeking to expand its legacy, you are likely to stumble upon complex business issues, confiscatory taxes and intricate laws.
An all-inclusive plan must consider all the family’s wealth, in avenues such as the nature of the estate, transfer of interest, regulation of trusts, benevolent desires and stability in governance.
Legacy planners are tasked with instilling financial knowledge in the younger generation to minimize chances of financial feuds when they take over in future. A number of disciplines might be invoked to craft optimized and properly structured policies to manage a family’s legacy.
Risk managers
Risk managers in a family office are tasked with communicating risk processes and policies for a particular family. They develop suitable models that take into account operational, market and credit risk. They also instill effective controls and provide analytical and research support for a given family estate.
Financial planners and accountants
Financial planners are hired for their expert approach in managing debt, setting savings strategies, and planning budgets for families and individual family members. Their work depends on the relationships they cultivate with their clients. Their retention rate is high due to their ability to guide different families into prosperity.
Lifestyle managers
Family offices consist of a team of professionals that act as family custodians. They handle personal affairs that boil down to discrete lifestyle needs of their clients. Families may need background checks conducted on business and personal staff, security services when they are at home or traveling, private yacht and aircraft management, travel arrangements and fulfillment of business plans.
Asset manager
The roles of a family office asset manager include:
- Managing the assets of a client in accordance with the investment goals and preferences.
- Meeting with family members to evaluate the needs, progress, status, goals and risks of their investments.
- Formulating monetary statements, business forecasts and activity reports.
- Strategise, organize and preserve portfolios.
How to ensure trusted candidates
Finding trustworthy people is an extremely critical step taken when sourcing for private staff. There are numerous applications to choose from, but no proper way of knowing who to trust with your portfolio and access to your personal affairs.
Ways of spotting trustworthy domestic staff
- People who are known to you
A common place to start is by approaching people you already trust to join your team. It may be a successful venture or may lead to unpleasant results.
Involving your family members and friends might be a risky move for your estate. It all comes down to the strength of your connections, the level of trust that you have established and the likelihood of conflicts due to opposing interests.
It could also work! The decision on whether to use it depends on the setup of your social group.
- Use a private staffing agency
Private staffing agencies help to ensure the right caliber of staff for such a sensitive position. They have specialist contacts and experience within the industry to allow them to quickly assess , interview and present candidates that you can trust to manage your family affairs. Such agencies know what affluent clients expect from private staff and how to find those skills.
Working with such agencies can help you match your needs with capable talent to ensure that there is no error, discontentment or misunderstanding.
Identifying reputable and credible agencies
To find staff for your estate, you need to first spot a family office agency that you can trust. Go for an agency that adequately describes who they are, their experience, core values and beliefs.
You’ll feel that your investments and assets are in the right hands if you find a reputable agency that you can trust.
Pembury Partners – placing high-calibre household staff
We are a world-class private staffing agency who pay special attention to matching steadfast talent with affluent families across the world.
We have accrued industry specific knowledge for over 35 years working in the luxury and private sectors. We boast of a team that brings customized and informed service with a professionally friendly and consultative touch.
Our main objective is linking you with experts to serve you as private staff for maximum prosperity. All our specialists uphold ultimate discretion to protect the interests, lifestyle, and comfort our clients. We make use of our reliable contacts to source people who have the right personality and skills that match your specific needs.
Whether you are looking to restructure or add professional talent for an upcoming challenge, our optimal solutions will ensure that you successfully take your venture to the next step and into exciting heights of success.
At Pembury Partners, we fully comprehend service provision and are passionate about our workforce because they are the force that takes every household to its desired level.
Get in touch with us today or plan a consultation via +44 (0) 203 657 4818.
