What Does a Family Office Do?

What does a family office do? Great question! As a personal CFO, our family office is focused on reducing the administrative burden of wealth, so that our clients can focus on more important parts of their life. Whether this is their family, friends, health, spirituality, or philanthropy.

We act as their personal CFO, providing comprehensive financial oversight and freeing clients from the cumbersome administrative tasks that often accompany significant wealth. This type of office manages everything from day-to-day bookkeeping to sophisticated financial reporting and performance tracking, ensuring that all pieces of a financial puzzle are properly aligned and clear to our clients.

This post describes how great family offices streamline financial management to enhance efficiency and clarity, allowing clients to focus on broader goals and investments without getting bogged down by the minutiae of wealth management.

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What Does a Family Office Do?

At our multi-family office, we’re the personal CFO for an exclusive number of wealthy families. Making their financial life easier by handling their administrative burdens, including organized record keeping, specialized bookkeeping, and sophisticated performance reporting.

If you are interested in joining our network, fill out this free assessment questionnaire to determine if our family office services can help you efficiently manage your wealth!

How Does a Family Office Differ From a Wealth Management Firm?

A family office differs from a wealth management firm primarily in its scope and level of personalized service. While wealth management firms focus on investment strategies and financial planning for a wide range of clients, a family office acts as a comprehensive personal CFO for wealthy families, managing all aspects of their financial lives. This includes not just investment management, but also sophisticated financial reporting, meticulous record keeping, and handling complex administrative tasks. Unlike wealth management firms that may offer more generic solutions, family offices provide tailored, holistic services designed to streamline financial management and support broader family goals, including philanthropy, estate planning, and personal financial oversight.

Administrative Burdens

Wealthy investors know how annoying and time-consuming administrative details can become. As family, business, philanthropy, and investment portfolios grow; financial life often becomes more complex and harder to manage. Our family office exists to relieve the administrative burden of managing a complex financial life so our clients can re-gain confidence and peace of mind over their wealth management.

Record Keeping

Relieving administrative burdens often begins with structuring accounts so that our family office has access to the necessary data. This may include working with your bankers, brokers/custodians, and accountants to co-ordinate a regular flow of information such as statements and flat files that can be neatly organized into shared folders with delegated access on a regular basis. This way, when decisions are made, we have easy access to what’s needed, when its needed.

Bookkeeping

After we have a process to manage financial records, the next step is getting a flow of data into the relevant bookkeeping software. This might include implementing an up-to-date bookkeeping process. This way, clients will receive detailed (or simple) reports of income/expenses and other tax information in useful formats going forward. Some clients like lots of details. Others prefer simplicity. So, we tailor our output to meet the needs of each individual client and their accountants.

Performance Reporting

Once we have smooth record keeping and bookkeeping process in place, we turn our attention to sophisticated reporting software to enhance visibility and financial evaluation to support better decision making. This means we provide clients with access to an online portal. There, they can easily view their financial life in as much (or as little) detail as each client desires. We will also produce quarterly reports of each client’s financial performance in any format and style of their choosing.

Supporting Accountants

Our family office goes out of our way to support our client’s accountants. We do this to eliminate the friction of tax compliance. But, we also support accountants so they can spend less time on compliance. And, more time providing value added advice to our clients. On a few occasions, we’ve turned an accountant’s worst clients into their best. By getting clients organized to reduce everyone’s administrative burden together.

Supporting Investors

What does a family office do? It certainly doesn’t provide advice on which stocks to buy (or sell) or provide tax advice. These are the jobs of investment advisors and accountants.

Instead, as our client’s personal CFO, our family office specializes in eliminating the administrative burden of managing wealth. To learn more about how our services can help you, contact us or consider scheduling a complimentary consultation with James Dunne.

What Does a Family Office Do?

The essential role of a family office is to simplify the complexities that come with substantial wealth. Allowing clients to engage more fully with the aspects of life that matter most to them — family, friends, spirituality, health, and philanthropy. By managing the intricate details of financial oversight, from meticulous record keeping to detailed performance reporting, our family office acts as more than just an advisor; it serves as a crucial part of a wealthy family’s ongoing strategy to preserve and enhance their financial legacy.

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