Multi-family office

A multi-family office (MFO) is usually an independent organization that supports multiple families to manage their entire wealth.

Multi-family offices typically 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. Some multi-family offices are also known to offer personal services such as managing household staff and making travel arrangements. Because the customized services offered by a multi-family office can be costly, clients of a multi-family office typically have a net worth in excess of $50 million.

A multi-family office (MFO) is a commercial enterprise established to meet the investment, estate planning and, in some cases, the lifestyle and tax service needs of affluent families.

MFOs can be created in one of three ways:

In the United States, many MFOs are registered investment advisors, some are trust companies and a handful are accounting or law firms.

The family office concept has its roots back in the 6th century. Then a majordomo was a person who would speak, make arrangements, or take charge for the affairs of the royal family and its wealth. Later in the 6th century, the upper nobility started to use these services of the majordomo as well. Hence, the concept of administratorship was invented and has prevailed until today.

The modern concept and understanding of family offices was developed in the 19th century. In 1838, the family of J.P. Morgan founded the House of Morgan, which managed the families’ assets and in 1882, the Rockefellers founded their family office, which prevailed until today.

Many family offices have started their business as so called single family offices, where the family owns the family office and serves only the owner family. Instead of covering the entire operative costs, many owners of single family offices decided to offer its services to other families as well. This concept is called multi-family office or multi-client family office. Only a few multi-family offices have founded their business independently, without a large family backing it.

In addition, the development of the multi-family office came as a result of the growing number of wealthy families, as well as the rapid developments in technology within the financial markets which required greater sophistication and skill in financial advisors in the 1980s and 1990s. The difficulty in attracting and retaining such talented employees became more difficult. These changes, combined with the consolidation of the financial services industry, significantly diminished the role of the bank trust departments that traditionally served the wealthy families. These trends resulted in an increased need and cost for family office-type services. To defray such costs many families opened their family offices to non-family members, resulting in multi-family offices.

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Wikipedia