What services does a Multi Family Office™ advisory firm provide?

There is no shortage of firms that use the term Multi Family Office™ to describe themselves. In most cases, these firms offer one service primarily: Investment management. Some may pay lip service to providing tax, estate, or other advice, but most offer little substance in this regard. These firms are generally investment advisory firms, or wealth advisory firms at best - but not family office advisory firms. True Multi Family Office™ firms offer services in all of the following areas:

• Family governance, goal development and education;
• Tax, estate and financial planning at a strategic level;
• Wealth transfer planning;
• Asset protection and other risk management;
• Investment consulting, monitoring, performance measurement;
• Philanthropic planning and foundation management;
• Financial recordkeeping, compliance, and consolidated reporting.

Firms that outsource these key capabilities that are so critical to effective wealth management are not doing their clients any favours. We know from experience that it is impossible to properly execute this type of planning without the expertise and experience internally to know what the external professionals should be doing. In short, it is impossible for a firm to achieve the best outcomes for a family unless the firm's professionals have walked in the shoes of the other advisors being engaged to design and/or execute the planning.

A true Multi Family Office™ advisory firm will have professionals on staff with great capability in each of the core professions: accounting and tax, law, investment and insurance. For more information on how WaterStreet can help, please see Life is a matter of degrees - The Value of Deep Expertise.