Category: Family CFO
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Getting Organized: The Foundations of a Family Office
A family office is sometimes thought of primarily as a vehicle for managing investments. In practice, its most valuable role is often much broader: helping a family organize its financial life, make thoughtful decisions and administer its affairs reliably over many years. The technology and reporting systems matter, but they should follow, and not precede,…
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Before You Set Up a Trust, Ask What the Complexity Is For
Trusts can solve real problems. But they can also preserve yesterday’s assumptions, restrict tomorrow’s beneficiaries and create an administrative burden that lasts for decades. Trusts can help protect a vulnerable beneficiary, manage an inheritance, address the needs of a blended family, support business succession or provide continuity when someone is no longer able to manage…
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The Comfort of Investment Platitudes
I recently reviewed a marketing brochure from an established Bay Street wealth management firm. Its investment philosophy was summarized in six principles: At first glance, this sounds like an excellent investment philosophy. In fact, it is difficult to disagree with any of it. And that’s precisely the problem. Investment marketing is often most persuasive when…
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You Sold Your Business. Now What?
Selling a business can create an unusual problem. For years, perhaps decades, most of your financial life revolved around one company. Your wealth was concentrated in a business you understood intimately. You knew the customers, the employees, the competition and the risks. You were actively involved in creating value. Then you sell. Suddenly, a large…
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You Have a Holding Company: Withdrawing Money
A holding company often begins with a simple purpose: to hold cash or investments outside an operating business. Over time, it may come to own stocks, bonds, GICs, investment funds or other assets. If you find yourself responsible for a holding company, the tax rules can seem intimidating at first. The good news is that…
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The Benefits of Simplicity
As families accumulate wealth, their financial affairs often become more complex. That’s a shame. Investors may establish investment holding companies, family trusts, donor-advised funds, private foundations, insurance structures, and multiple investment accounts. They may hire several investment managers, tax advisers, lawyers, bookkeepers, and reporting providers. Each new arrangement may appear sensible when considered on its…
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Skills That Build Wealth Can Sabotage Its Preservation
The qualities that help an entrepreneur build wealth are often easy to admire. Initiative, confidence, persistence, decisiveness, and a willingness to take calculated risks can turn an idea into a successful enterprise. Entrepreneurs learn to solve problems quickly, operate with incomplete information, challenge conventional thinking, and assume responsibility when outcomes are uncertain. These qualities are…
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What Is a Family Office? A Personal CFO for Wealthy Families
A family office helps wealthy individuals and families manage the responsibilities that come with significant wealth. Investment management may be part of that work, but it is rarely the whole story. A family office can also coordinate accounting, tax reporting, estate planning, philanthropy, family governance, bill payments, financial administration and the transition of responsibility to…
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Family Office Checklist for Canadian Investors
A family office becomes useful when managing wealth begins to resemble managing an organization rather than a personal investment account. This does not necessarily mean that a family office manages an excessively complicated financial structure. The complexity may be relatively modest: an investment holding company, several investment accounts, a trust, some private market investments and…
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What a True Family Office Does Beyond Investment Management
The term “family office” used to mean something quite specific: the organized people, processes, records, reporting, and decision-making structure that helped a wealthy family manage the complexity of its financial life. A family office was not simply an investment strategy, it was more like a CFO. It was the operating system around the family’s wealth.…