How to Evaluate a Multi-Family Office Guidelines Released

Stephen Harris

8 August 2005

The first ever published criteria for evaluating multi-family offices has been published by the US-based Family Wealth Alliance. “Almost every other industry and profession has standards in place. Yet this is the first time anyone has put a public ‘stake in the ground' with much needed standards for this arena," said Tom Livergood, chief executive of Family Wealth Alliance. He added: “We have been working with our advisory council for more than a year to develop these, so that we had some objective criteria in place when performing due diligence on MFO firms.” The FWA has drawn up four areas to evaluate MFO standards:

Whom Do They Serve? – Provides an explanation of the clients served by a multi-family office firm, including net worth and a minimum number of non-related families.

What Services Do They Offer? – Covers the ten core services proven to be essential to most complex wealthy families.

How Do They Deliver Services? – Details the value MFO firms provide through trust, integrated and customized services, full transparency and open architecture access to the best outsource firms.

Who Are These Firms? – Reviews the origins, professional credentials, competency and experience the MFO firm needs to have in order to implement and manage family relationships.

“The wealth management arena is quite complex. We add value by making sense of this bewildering world through objective education of families, and when asked by a family, we are akin to an executive placement firm serving as a matchmaker of families and best-in-class firms,” said Mr Livergood.