Structures
Family Office
A private wealth management advisory firm that serves ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families, coordinating investments, estate planning, tax strategy, governance, and administration in a single integrated structure.
A family office is the most comprehensive form of private wealth management. Unlike a private bank or independent financial adviser — which typically cover a subset of a family’s needs — a family office is designed to coordinate every dimension of a family’s financial and operational life: investments, tax, legal structures, administration, reporting, governance, and succession.
Two principal forms
Single-family offices (SFOs) serve one family exclusively. They are fully bespoke — designed around that family’s asset base, jurisdictions, family dynamics, and operating preferences. The cost of running a dedicated team and infrastructure means SFOs typically become viable for families with assets above €50–100 million, though the threshold varies widely depending on complexity.
Multi-family offices (MFOs) serve several families under one roof, sharing platform costs across clients. They offer more standardised services at lower entry points, but by definition cannot be fully customised to any single family.
What a family office actually does
The scope varies, but common functions include:
- Investment governance — defining investment policy, selecting and monitoring external managers, consolidating performance reporting
- Wealth planning and structuring — coordinating tax and legal advisers across jurisdictions, maintaining structures (trusts, holding companies, foundations)
- Administration and reporting — bookkeeping, cash management, consolidated balance sheets, document management
- Governance — family charters, investment committees, next-generation education, family meeting facilitation
- Technology and data — aggregating data across banks and managers into a single reporting layer
The coordination problem
The deeper purpose of a family office is to solve a coordination problem that grows naturally with wealth: as the number of advisers, asset managers, legal structures, and jurisdictions increases, so does the risk that each specialist optimises their own domain without anyone holding the full picture. A family office — or a family office advisory firm operating in that role — provides the integrating layer above the specialists.
This entry is part of PWA’s plain-language glossary of terms used in modern family office architecture.