Services

We are a Multi-family offices (MFOs), provide a variety of services including tax and estate planning, risk management, objective financial counsel, trusteeship, lifestyle management, coordination of professionals, investment advice, and foundation management.

What are the benefit of having a Multi Family Offices?

• Objective financial advice
• Creative solutions to financial issues
• Clearinghouse for financial, investment, tax and estate planning ideas
• Cross-fertilization of ideas resulting from solving issues for multiple families
• Services are typically “all you can eat” for asset based fee or flat retainer fee
• Advice from professional team with diverse backgrounds
• Coordination of other advisers
• Proactive advice – a function of low client to employee ratio and frequency of meetings
• Delivery of “best of breed” money managers, custody, insurance, loans, etc.
• Negotiated cost savings with other financial providers (e.g. investment management, custody, trading costs)
• Integration of client’s estate planning, income taxes, investments, philanthropic goals and family situation

What do a Multi Family Offices do?

Independence:MFOs typically do not sell (traditional products that a family might typically encounter from a brokerage firm) and generally are not compensated for the products utilized by clients. MFOs usually follow a “service delivery model” holding themselves out as an objective provider of advice that places the interests of their clients first.

Breadth and Integration of Services:MFOs provide a wide array of services and typically oversee their clients’ entire financial universe. MFOs will have full information about their clients investments, tax situation, estate plan and family dynamics. With this information the MFO can assist in structuring and administering the clients’ financial universe in an optimal fashion.

Professionals with Diverse Skills and Deep Specialties:MFO professionals provide a wide array of advice and assistance to their clients. MFOs also have to be able to provide specialty knowledge on certain topics such as: income taxation, estate planning, and investments.

High Touch Services:MFOs have high average account sizes (usually in the tens of millions) and low client to employee ratios (around 3 to 1 range). Large account sizes combined with low client-to-employee ratios allows a great deal of focus and attention on each client family. Meetings with clients often occur many times a year.

Multi-Generational Planning:MFOs typically work with an entire family – the patriarch/matriarch, their children and grandchildren. Planning encompasses the family’s goals which typically includes passing wealth down to lower generations in a tax efficient manner. Children and grandchildren are clients and are counseled on investments, taxes, estate planning, and philanthropy from an early age. MFOs often coordinate and moderate family meetings for their client families.

Outsourcing:MFOs do not typically provide all services in-house. It is common for some of the investment management to be outsourced to independent money managers. Custody and tax return preparation are also commonly outsourced.