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A challenge for many wealth owners is understanding how to assess the costs and value of the family office. This 2012 FOX Fall Forum session provided family members and family office executives a framework to determine and communicate seven critical issues managed through the family officeand featured highlights from the FOX 2012 family office benchmarking study.Some key takeaways:

Leadership succession is perhaps the most uniquely challenging issue a family faces. It transcends the business of wealth management to touch on personal issues of family dynamics and engagement. It is for this reason that you need a clear, transparent and understandable plan for making a change in leadership, one that helps you balance preserving your legacy with preserving family harmony. In this 2012 FOX Fall Forum session, Karen Neal and Margaret Vaughan Robinson of the Family Office Exchange detailed a roadmap to help create a successful plan.Some key takeaways:

Family leaders are finding that to cultivate family members’ interests, talents, dreams and careers to their fullest potential, they need to constantly develop new strategies, new roles, and new understandings.

It is estimated that by 2020 between $400 billion and $1 trillion dollars will be invested through impact investing. Clearly this new approach to influencing positive social and environmental changes has far-reaching implications.

The trustee and beneficiary relationship has great potential to be personally rewarding for both parties. It can also be very challenging. The path for success starts with some crucial conversations about what’s involved in the trustee role. This 2012 FOX Fall Forum session looked at the critical steps grantors, beneficiaries and trustees must take to ensure each party is educated, engaged and accountable.Some key takeaways:

This organizing session at the 2012 FOX Fall Forum marked the launch of a new investment community, the FOX Deal Exchange. FOX CEO and FDX Chairman Sara Hamilton provided an overview of this venture, which was followed by a panel discussion with three leading private equity teams, each dedicated to deploying one family’s private capital in strategic ways. Some key takeaways:

Launching an effective family enterprise plan can be a daunting task yet it is essential to the long term sustainability of the family and its wealth. This 2012 FOX Fall Forum session detailed a framework for understanding the planning process and explored the changing risk environment for wealthy families.Some highlights include:

As the baby boomers retire, many family office and multi-family office executives in key roles who have served the same clients for years will be leaving their roles. This change has significant implications for family members who lean on these leaders for insight and comprehensive knowledge of the family’s interests, advisors who look to them to coordinate services and the staff who rely on their leadership. In this 2012 FOX Fall Forum session, Jill Barber of CYMI, Ltd.

As family leadership transitions from one generation to the next, it’s not unusual for servicing needs to change to support the younger clients. Understanding the service requirements of different client life stages allows advisors and family office managers to adapt their service model to the needs of different generations, and reduce the risk of such shifts.