Building efficient family office operations

Most family offices have grown increasingly complex over the years. As Beth Grubb and Tommy Wright share in this video, it may be time to revisit standard practices and consider a more coordinated, systems-driven approach.  

Building efficient family office operations: What you need to know...in a nutshell

Today family offices face a myriad of complexities, both internal and external, in the matters they must deal with. Asset allocation, tax planning, growing the family wealth, accounting, technology—there are a whole host of areas that they face and these impact each member of the family from the youngest to the oldest generation.

What functions are involved in an efficient family office strategy? 

Depending on the family office structure, their needs touch upwards of a dozen areas. These include:

• Investment management
• Wealth transfer
• Tax planning
• Asset allocation
• Bill pay
• Treasury management
• Family meetings
• Family foundation
• Trust administration
• Legal

All of these areas rely on one another. Many times the family office’s ability to manage all of these areas is outpaced by the complexity unless they have an integrated, documented approach.

How can family office management become better integrated?

Often, partner accounting is done in a very manual manner, with individual entries in a ledger and really a holdover from our old paper-based accounting system. They are technology solutions available today, that help us make that process run more efficiently.  

Today there are better ways to get the job done with technology and examples of those better ways are using electronic applications for bill pay and project management so that tasks can be accurately assigned, monitored and completed.

One of the areas we find is a really hot topic today, is cybersecurity and identity theft in family offices. This is a huge area that we all run into in society today and needs dedicated professionals who can address these particular concerns.

Why should a family office change what has been working?

There are so many tools to streamline finance and accounting for the family office. This is a great time to assess people, processes, and technology for the family office. 

Is your family office set up to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible? Let us help.