Families tend to focus on the technical elements when planning wealth transfer, including management of their investments and estate planning. However, to build a long-term foundation for success, it's just as critical to strategically prepare the people in a family. Come to this interactive discussion to learn realistic best practices for strengthening the 'people-side' of your Family Office planning, including communication, education, and preparation- for future roles.
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For the past 3 decades, the private wealth industry has been heavily focused on, and dominated by, highly technical disciplines, such as investment management, tax and accounting, and trust and estate planning, with solutions primarily serving the financial capital of enterprise families and the vision of prior generations. The qualitative needs and wellbeing of future generations expected to benefit from these solutions have rarely been a focus of industry practitioners.
The more you know about yourself, the better your relationships will be—including with money. In this issue, we celebrate two people who are harnessing their experiences and expertise to help others understand the emotional side of money. From a conversation with Jennifer Risher on breaking the money taboo, to Stan Treger, a behavioral scientist, using psychology to unpack money stories—this issue shows that exploring your relationship with money can be the first step to taking charge of your wealth.
The dramatic growth of the family office industry in the 1980s was sparked by new liquidity running through hundreds of business-owning families. In an effort to preserve and expand their wealth, they needed a professional financial office so they could focus on broadening their business endeavors or living unencumbered lives.
Wealthy families have a significant positive socio-economic impact around the world, but lasting impact depends on those families prospering for generations. This is not guaranteed, however, and more intergenerational wealth transfers succeed if families adopt a modern Family Office model that suits their needs and goes beyond managing and growing the family’s financial capital over the long-term.
All parents have reasons for why they do or do not share their wealth with their children, and neither option is without challenges. The key for parents is to find the balance between sharing everything and sharing nothing while also passing along the skills required to ensure their children become responsible inheritors and/or beneficiaries. Here are some best practices for striking that balance without losing the opportunities that come with significant wealth.
At its core, a mission statement serves as a compass, continually steering an organization or business toward their goals. For the families who undertake the process of creating a mission statement, it provides a similar and essential navigational tool. To be successful, however, the mission statement must resonate and mean something to everyone in the family. It should ideally look inward to identify each family member’s personal values.
This research brief uses direct feedback from members of the rising gen to identify their top concerns and shed new insights into the important goals they have with their family. With the data and recommendations gathered, you can learn more about the group—including the challenges and pressures they face—to create a roadmap that leads to productive family engagement and communications, action planning, and problem-solving.
When setting up a family legacy plan that extends across generations, it’s vital to have a family governance plan that empowers a family to govern its wealth and enterprises as a cohesive unit. While each family is unique, the keys to incorporating an effective family governance will be uniting around shared purposes, having a written family constitution that sets forth broad principles and policies in areas that are identified by the family as needed, and keeping it separate from any operating business governance.
In 2022 Dr. Jamie Weiner published The Quest for Legitimacy: How Children of Prominent Families Find Their Place in the World, a collection of qualitative research modeling rites of passage, pathways to individuation, creating trusted partnerships, and addressing family dynamics. Similarly, in 2022 FOX has conducted focus groups and a rising gen study, which affirms what we know about rising gen, and illuminates the methods to ensuring success and fulfillment.