Crucial succession challenges are psychological Huge questions for family offices in the Gulf A conversation with ICONIQ founding partner, Divesh Makan Three top family office jobs Book: Nassim Nicholas Taleb on how some systems can improve from shocks Podcast: Howard Marks on AI

Crucial challenges in generational transition need more than legal tools.

James Thorp

If geopolitical risk was a leading concern for family offices coming into 2026, it was certainly warranted. 

A few weeks ago, before tensions escalated (drastically) in the Gulf, we had an insightful meeting with James Thorp, an advisor helping families with succession challenges.

Something that surfaced in our meeting was his notion that succession planning is fundamentally a psychological challenge being addressed with legal tools.

“Families create perfect governance documents that say the next generation has authority, but when real decisions happen, everyone still looks to the founding principal,” says Thorp. “But authority isn't granted by documents - it's earned through demonstrated judgment and psychological readiness of both generations.”

Thorp firmly believes most founding principals can't step back because their entire identity is formed around being the decider, a challenge that trust documents won’t solve. 

“Legal tools only function if the humans involved are psychologically ready for what the documents require.”

His perspective is shaped not by a consulting background, but from first-hand experience of succession inside multiple ventures within one of the Qatari royal families.

“I spent a decade embedded with them and other Gulf royal families and family offices, navigating everything from operational strategy to billion-dollar succession transitions where the real work wasn't governance documents, it was the psychology of stepping back and stepping up.”

A key regional learning for Thorp was how Gulf families integrate family identity when it comes to governance, something that can help them overcome a challenge more common in the West, what he refers to as ‘the identity void’.

“When you've spent 40 years building something from nothing, your entire identity is wrapped up in being the founder, the protector, the person who makes final decisions. Stepping back isn't a rational business decision - it's answering, ‘Who am I when I'm no longer the builder?’” 

“Most founding principals have never constructed an identity separate from the business. So they maintain control under the guise of ‘mentorship’ because facing that void is unbearable. Succession documents can't solve an existential crisis.”

While the psychological dynamics of succession are nearly identical across cultures, Thorp has noticed markedly different approaches to next-gen transition between the Gulf and Europe and the US-based clients.

“Western families usually try to create authority through structures - board seats, titles, documented decision rights. Gulf families understand authority is earned gradually through demonstrated judgment and cultural fluency over years.” 

As an example, Thorp points out a British heir that received a COO title immediately after business school, essentially authority on paper, but zero genuine authority in practice. 

“His modernization initiatives were quietly undermined within six months. Contrast that with a Qatari next-gen leader who spent five years handling progressively larger decisions under his father's advisory oversight.” 

Where the former succession collapsed, the Qatari transition worked seamlessly because authority was built through demonstrated judgment, not granted in documents.

“That approach fails because you can't transfer authority like a legal asset. The Gulf model works because the next generation builds authority slowly by proving wisdom, respecting elder counsel, and earning family trust before they're given consequential decisions. Once trust is established, the transition actually works because it's cultural, not mechanical.”

Most of Thorp Advisory’s clients are first or second-generation UHNW families, either based in the Gulf or with significant Middle Eastern business interests. 

Despite better family integration, they also face succession problems where they get stuck on the psychological dynamics.

“What makes them right for my work is they recognise this isn't a technical problem requiring better documentation, it's a psychological challenge requiring deeper work with both generations.” 

Yet he often finds both generations try to solve the wrong problem. 

“The senior generation thinks the challenge is transferring wealth successfully, so they focus on governance documents. The next generation thinks it's proving they're capable, so they pursue credentials.” 

“But the real challenges are completely different: the senior generation needs to reconstruct identity when they're no longer the decider, and the next generation needs to build genuine authority in a context where they inherited rather than built.” 

It’s the gap between involvement and actual authority where most families get things wrong, and where external parties like Thorp add value.

Beyond succession, he also advises on cross-cultural business dynamics, particularly for families and founders navigating between Western and GCC markets.

Much of this work involves shifting perceptions, particularly where the Gulf wealth culture is viewed through a more transactional, Western lens. 

“Western business assumes relationships are networking, decisions are about ROI, and speed equals efficiency. In Gulf families, relationship-building isn't overhead before business - it is the business.” 

He notes how the slower pace in the Gulf isn't bureaucracy, but rather methodical trust-building and assessing if they’re meeting someone they’ll want to work with in five years. 

“Western founders often mistake English fluency for cultural alignment, missing that the decision logic is still rooted in family honor, elder wisdom, and relationship loyalty.”

While the family office world has become sophisticated financially, Thorp sees enormous value in the industry becoming more psychologically advanced.  

“What's completely underdeveloped is helping the next generation build the internal architecture that makes them effective stewards: genuine authority earned through demonstrated judgment, independent identity beyond their parents' shadow, cultural intelligence, and processing the psychology of inherited wealth. 

“Right now families get either technical advisors who don't do psychological work or executive coaches who lack business sophistication. The innovation is bringing these together.”

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What to read

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that some systems do more than withstand shocks, they actually improve because of them. Taleb contrasts fragile structures that break under stress with antifragile ones designed to benefit from volatility and disorder. As the world enters another period of severe uncertainty, Taleb’s book is more relevant than ever.

What to listen to

Here’s Howard Marks’ memo in audio in case you missed it. In AI Hurtles Ahead, Marks argues that recent advances in AI are far more powerful and rapid than many investors realize, making it unlikely that AI is just a passing fad. But he warns that even if AI transforms the economy, today’s massive spending and valuations may not deliver strong returns for investors.

Partner with Mr Family Office Across 𝕏, LinkedIn, podcasts and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with 65K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs every week. Reach an engaged audience with our tailored partnership options. Find out more

The researcher tracking the data behind the family office boom What easily-affordable things the rich refuse to pay for Read: from small acquisitions to giant returns Podcast: taking down bestselling “big idea” books with humor and precision Watch: Glen Powell must eliminate his relatives to receive $28B

Supported by Fountain Life

The researcher tracking the data behind the family office boom.

Dr. Rebecca Gooch

Dr. Rebecca Gooch might have published more reports on family offices than anyone.

She previously led the research division at Campden Wealth, where she was responsible for producing in-depth studies on family office operations globally, and how the landscape was evolving in response to growing complexity and scale.

For the past few years, she’s had the role of Global Head of Insights at Deloitte Private, where she covers family offices, family businesses, and ultra-high net worth individuals. 

If you haven’t seen her name, you’ve almost certainly read her work in publications like the Family Office Insights Series, one of the most comprehensive studies of family offices globally.

Amongst the now numerous (and highly repetitive) family office reports published, these stand out for their qualitative research, notably in The Fireside, a collection of revealing interviews with family office executives.

Mr Family Office caught up with her in London recently to find out what drives her work.  

“Family offices operate at the intersection of markets, governance, and human dynamics, and understanding how they balance those forces is critical,” says Gooch. 

“I am fortunate to learn directly from some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated family offices as well as their advisors—particularly around topics such as managing risk in uncertain times and sustaining wealth and legacy across generations.” 

Patient research yields results 

Many of Deloitte Private’s studies take a year or more to produce because this time is required to share a genuinely new lens.

“One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that each piece of research meaningfully advances our understanding of the family office landscape rather than simply reinforcing what is already known.” 

For example, a recent report examined the evolution of the family office ecosystem, from the past to looking ahead to 2030. 

“By embracing a whole new analytical model, we were able to demonstrate that the family office arena is one of the fastest-growing economic landscapes globally.” 

The research reflected family wealth growth of nearly 190% over a decade, significant considering that family offices already control trillions of dollars.

“Given that this level of economic influence will be concentrated among less than merely 11,000 families, understanding how they operate and impact the broader financial ecosystem is increasingly important.”

On operational inefficiencies

Despite the wealth and influence, she still sees inefficiencies in how the industry operates. 

“One of the least efficient areas remains operational integration—particularly across investment, risk, governance, and reporting functions.”

Gooch notes that rapid family office growth has created fragmented systems, isolated data silos and lack of real-time insights on risk and performance, crucial during periods of market stress.

“Technology has the potential to address many of these inefficiencies, yet adoption has been uneven. In some cases, digital transformation has lagged behind the growing complexity and scale of family office operations.” 

As family offices continue to professionalize, she believes improved operational coherence and cyber resilience will be critical to safeguard both capital and multi-generation continuity.

The shape of things to come

Part of her daily work in engaging with family offices is to identify emerging patterns that signal what issues are most pressing.

“Having followed the evolution of this space for many years, shifts in sentiment and behaviour show up clearly in the data—almost like lights on a roadmap—indicating how the community is responding to the environment around it and where it is heading next.”

And it’s the influence of risk, geopolitics, and intergenerational transition that will likely shape the industry over the next few years.

“Many families are simultaneously navigating heightened geopolitical uncertainty, rapid technological change, and one of the largest intergenerational wealth transfers in history,” says Gooch. “How they manage governance, decision-making, and values across generations—while adapting to an increasingly volatile world—will shape the future of the arena.”

The long-term orientation of family offices can look unconventional compared to the traditional institutional perspective, but she sees this as a major advantage. 

“Many family offices are willing to sacrifice short-term efficiency or returns in order to preserve flexibility, resilience, and control over multiple generations.” 

This ties in with what she sees as a common misconception: that family offices are primarily investment vehicles, when in reality they are much broader, more complex enterprises. 

“Family offices sit at the intersection of capital allocation, governance, risk management, succession planning, and family dynamics, and their decisions are often shaped by long-term objectives rather than short-term financial performance.”

Moving towards interactive research

Translating the collective wisdom of leading families into practical guides that can inform strategies is a big part of her motivation.

“The most rewarding part of what I do is knowing that the insights Deloitte Private produces genuinely help families and their enterprises navigate complexity and make better long-term decisions.” 

Gooch plans to evolve her work to be far more interactive and granular, allowing readers to engage with large volumes of data more intuitively and relevant to their own particular circumstances. 

“Rather than offering only high-level insights, we are increasingly focused on breaking findings down by region, country, AUM level, and generation of wealth, so families can access insights that feel tailored to their specific context.” 

“Family offices are as unique as the families they serve, and research is most useful when it reflects that diversity.”

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What to read

The Compounders by Oddbjørn Dybvad, Kjetil Nyland and Adnan Hadžiefendić spotlights a group of under-the-radar, publicly listed acquirers quietly compounding capital at exceptional rates. They buy small, often family-owned businesses in fragmented markets, keep them decentralized, and reinvest cash with ruthless discipline, in some cases with truly incredible returns.

What to listen to

If Books Could Kill is laugh-out-loud funny. Hosts Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri rip into bestselling “big idea” books and take them down with humor and precision. In this episode, they go after personal finance classic The Millionaire Next Door, challenging its central claim that extreme frugality is the secret to wealth. They expose the book’s weak research, survivorship bias, and moralising tone. They challenge myths throughout and finish with an interesting discussion around wealth and privilege.

We’re doing podcasts. Not our own, but instead we’re distributing quality content from others on the crucial themes of the global wealth industry. An opportunity to learn from industry experts (and for brands to reach the growing family office community). Find out more

A new approach to family office networking The actual cost of running a family office Books: the real driver of power is information networks Podcast: Do you really want to work in a family office? Watch: inside the Family Office 15 List

Supported by Nodem

From drinks meetup to global network powered by WhatsApp.

Sam Copley of FOS network.

Downstairs in the dimly lit private room of a restaurant in London’s Mayfair neighborhood, over 100 guests are engaged in lively banter, broken only by friendly introductions or the need to jostle at the bar for another drink.

This is a family office industry gathering, yet there are no sponsors, unusually few blue suits, almost no gray hair and about a third of guests are female. 

Conversation ranges from the serious business of geopolitics and investment policies to debates over the best Thai restaurant and top school rankings. 

It’s organized yet informal, and that’s entirely the point.

We’re at the latest gathering curated by FOS (Family Office Socials), a network started by Paul Winter and Sam Copley in 2021.

Realizing that most of the networking value from attending industry events was gained from peripheral socializing, they started a WhatsApp group to facilitate this.

In five years it’s grown far beyond original expectations. 

“The evolution of FOS has been completely organic,” says Copley. “What started as a small drinking group is now an international Swiss army knife for all things family office-related.”

After a career start in the UK foreign office, Copley moved into finance over a decade ago, and is currently at a single family office, for whom running a network is naturally beneficial. 

“I spend a lot of my time meeting new families, discussing potential touch-points and exploring synergies between our family office and others.”

FOS is run from London but has expanded globally, with groups in the US, Switzerland, the UAE, Asia-Pacific and Spain. 

And while Copley is 37, fitting with the age bracket of the Mayfair event, he says they cater for all family office folk. 

“It’s a mix of principals, next-gen and investment executives. Age-wise it’s broad - from fresh grads to members in their 70s. We’ve also just launched FOS Women, which had their first event this week.”

Utilizing existing tech 

Rather than develop their own or explore existing community software, FOS operates exclusively on WhatsApp, which is split into core groups across communities. 

Their core community contains Socials (“The mothership”), Deals & Funds (“Separate groups where families can present investments they have participated in”), Insights (“For articles and research”) and Solutions (“For non-investment related peer-to-peer requests”). 

It works well enough that they have no plans to migrate away from WhatsApp anytime soon.

“The beauty of WhatsApp is that everyone is logged in all the time: If I need a view on the new Sequoia fund, a recommendation for a new tax lawyer in Paris, a view on a conference in Miami or to meet a family office that owns hotels in Asia, I can access nearly 1,000 relevant people immediately. This would not be the case with a log-in platform.”

Copley notes that when he started in the wealth industry, he found family offices’ isolation and emphasis on privacy hampered their ability to form meaningful collaboration, which helped motivate the creation of FOS.

“While the need for discretion won't change, I think innovations, tech-enabled or otherwise, that facilitate greater collaboration, such as pooled due diligence, cost-sharing, co-investments, etc., they have the potential to be hugely powerful.”

No substitute for meeting IRL 

While WhatsApp provides all the technology they need, much of the value members obtain is through frequent in-person gatherings.

“We run monthly drinks in Mayfair for our community - generally on the last Thursday of the month. We also run a 'lunch and learn' series with speakers on educational topics like geopolitics and philanthropy, as opposed to fund pitches or companies raising capital.”

They’re also exploring the potential of sports, experiences and other activities that will get people out of boardrooms and enable genuine connection. 

This deliberate alternative to the traditional conference approach aligns with their members’ interest.

“We ran a poll in our FOS Solutions group on which family office networking approaches are the most effective - while there are some excellent large scale conferences out there, these were by far the least popular option selected by our community.”

“I think it's worth remembering that family office professionals and principals, however eccentric they can be, are still humans, and are likely to enjoy art, music, sports and other activities away from conference rooms. This is particularly the case for younger members of the ecosystem.”

On filtering members 

As with any private network of UHNW individuals and family office executives there are constant attempts at infiltration. 

Copley notes that most prospective members are introduced by existing members, and while both him and Winter do due diligence before admission, it’s his partner that acts as gatekeeper.

“Paul has more of a 'bad cop' role, ensuring the rules we've established are followed, deleting unsuitable content and - occasionally - kicking people out of FOS.” 

He adds that with any hint of misrepresentation, or general behaviour at odds with the ethos of FOS, Winter has stepped in to ban the offenders. 

It’s also led to the odd delicate situation.

“Mayfair is small and we constantly bump into former FOS members on Berkeley Street or in one of the clubs, some of whom take expulsion extremely badly.”

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What to read

In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari zooms out over 100,000 years to argue that the real driver of power isn’t capital or weapons, it’s information networks. From religion and empires to totalitarian regimes and now AI, he shows how whoever controls the flow of information shapes reality, coordination, and ultimately wealth. For family offices, the subtext is clear: every era’s fortunes are built and destroyed on new information architectures, and AI may be the biggest regime shift yet.

What to listen to

This week, we launched the Mr Family Office Podcast Network as the home of informative shows hosted by industry insiders delivering insights and advice to family offices, wealth management professionals and UHNWIs. The first show we are highlighting is the Family Office Sherpa, hosted by friend of the Mr Family Office team Shaun Parkin. In this episode, Shaun asks Do You Really Want to Work in a Family Office? It’s an honest look at the pluses and minuses of working for a family office.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 65K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

By Jessica Parker, founder of JP Advisory.

Family office technology projects succeed or fail for many reasons. Implementation, training, and ongoing support all play a role. However, one of the most overlooked factors is what happens before any of that begins: the preparation and decisions made in the lead-up to signing. That is the focus of this piece.

I have had the interesting opportunity to see family office investment reporting technology projects from both sides. First, within a Single Family Office, leading technology selection and implementation, where I made my share of mistakes. Then on the vendor side as a solutions consultant, where I worked with family offices globally and saw these same patterns repeat across many projects.

The standard best practice advice on technology implementation is well documented and easy to find. What I want to share here are the things that often get overlooked in the initial phases of the project: the lessons I wish someone had shared with me, and the patterns I saw derail projects from both sides of the table.

Consider this the advice I would give you over a coffee, to help side-step some of the hard lessons. The good news is that when family offices get these foundations right, projects tend to run smoothly.

The internal work pays off

When deals did not proceed, a common reason I saw was not a competitor winning. It was "deal lost, no decision." Family offices would spend months evaluating platforms, sitting through hours of demos and vendor discussions, holding internal meetings. And then nothing. They would decide not to move forward at all.

Most of the time this happened because the internal work had not been done first. The family office had not yet clarified what they were looking for.

I know this because I was that prospect. My vendor assessment took twelve months before I selected a solution. Every time I learned something new about one vendor I would circle back to the others asking "can you do this too?" even when it was not a must-have. I was chasing shiny features instead of solving a defined problem.

Before you talk to vendors, it is worth getting clear on what problem you are actually solving. Document your must-haves and your nice-to-haves. Understand where investment reporting fits in your existing tech stack and what integrations you will need.

If you are evaluating multiple vendors, a Request for Proposal or evaluation template can help. It keeps your requirements front of mind and makes it easier to compare responses objectively. After several demos, it can be hard to remember which platform does what well.

Something worth keeping in mind: software does not fix your governance, it only exposes it. If you do not have an investment policy statement in place, or your processes need refinement, the technology will surface that quickly. Cleaning house first will save you substantial time during selection and implementation.

Getting clear on who will own the system

One team usually drives the need for a new investment reporting platform, but the platform rarely serves just one group. Thinking through ownership and involvement early prevents delays and helps you realize the full potential of the platform.

I saw this play out in two ways.

The first was about who owns the system long term. In one family office, the investment team selected and implemented the platform, then handed it to the accounting team to maintain. The accounting team had no say in the selection, no opportunity to input into requirements, and needed six months to get up to speed before business as usual could resume. Had they been involved from the start, the onboarding would have been smoother, particularly given they had access to the data required for implementation.

The second was when key people were left out of the conversation. In another family office, the person who had the data and knowledge to do the onboarding was only told about the platform after the contract was signed. They were expected to fit implementation into their day job with no additional support. The result was frustration, which impacted buy-in across the family office.

It is worth thinking about this more broadly than solving a problem for one group. Who are the actual users? Internal staff, family members, or both? Each has different needs and you will get better requirements by involving them early, not just to avoid surprises but because they will surface things you may not have considered.

Resourcing for success

The person implementing needs access to the data, the authority to make decisions, and the time. If that is not available internally, it is worth bringing in help from the start rather than partway through when things go off course. You are investing a significant amount in the technology, so it makes sense to invest in the resources to get it right.

I watched one family office use a technology project to engage Gen 2 in the business, giving them ownership of platform selection. It was a thoughtful way to build capability and involvement. The challenge came during implementation: a summer intern was tasked with onboarding the system. She was capable and keen, but did not have access to the data or relationships with the long-term staff who did. Without that foundation, the project stalled. It is the kind of situation that can happen to any office trying to balance development opportunities with operational realities.

It also helps to be realistic about what "go live" actually means. We always think it will take less time and fewer resources than it does, so double your estimate. Consider whether you want to run the old and new systems in parallel and for how long. Factor in your team's other commitments like year-end, compliance deadlines, deal flow, and other major projects.

Rethinking what you truly need

I worked with one family who were determined to replicate a 20-page report in their new platform. Onboarding stalled because the team felt they could not move forward without recreating it exactly. Eventually someone from the family office team asked the principals what they actually looked at each month, hoping to prioritize which elements to tackle first. The answer surprised everyone: about two pages. What started as a blocker turned into a valuable conversation about what the family actually wanted to see and how often.

Platforms have great flexibility and customization, however not the infinite flexibility of Excel. If you go in expecting to replicate everything exactly, you may be disappointed. But remember why you are moving off Excel in the first place: formulas that break, the manual errors, the version control headaches, the key person risk, the hours spent stitching data together, the reporting bottlenecks, and more.

A new system is an opportunity to simplify, refine, and improve your investment data, rather than just finding a faster way to do what you have always done.

The same applies to historical data. Migrating years of transactions is costly, time consuming, and often frustrating when calculations do not match due to different methodologies. Ask yourself what you actually need: private equity positions require full history, but for other investments, consolidated performance figures may be sufficient. You can always add more detail later once you are comfortable with the system.

What the glossy security brochure will not tell you

Data security, cyber security, data ownership. These questions can be pushed to the very end of the discussion, however they deserve more airtime.

Every vendor has a glossy one pager about their "military grade" security, but that is not due diligence. The questions that matter are the ones that do not always get asked:

• Who owns the data you put into the system, and is that explicitly stated in the contract?

• What happens to your data if you terminate, and can you export it in a usable format?

• What if the vendor is acquired or winds down? Where is your data physically stored?

• Does the vendor use your data for any secondary purposes?

• What certifications do they hold, and how often do they undergo independent security assessments?

• If there is a breach, how and when do they notify?

These are just some of the questions worth asking. I have seen family offices move through this section quickly, only to discover later that what they assumed was covered had not been explicitly agreed.

Unless you have a dedicated IT function, it is hard to know what to ask, let alone how to evaluate the answers. If that sounds familiar, it is worth getting external help. There are firms that specialize in IT and cyber security for family offices who can help you ask the right questions and make sure the key requirements are clearly documented in the contract.

You are choosing a partnership, not a product

Technology evolves fast and the platform you buy today will look different in two years. It is important to understand where the vendor is headed and what is on their roadmap. Are they investing in areas that benefit family offices like yours, or are they focused on a different client segment?

Vendors have a role to play here too. The best ones will help you scope properly, set realistic expectations, and flag risks early. A good vendor wants the project to succeed as much as you do.

If they are promising to build something specific for you as a condition of signing, get the commitment in writing, and preferably in the contract.

The bottom line

No system will be perfect for the exact and unique needs of every family office. That is not a reason to stay stuck in Excel spreadsheets and manual work forever, but it helps to keep your must-haves front of mind.

Get clear on the problem, do the internal work, bring the right people along, and resource it properly. The relationship with your vendor matters as much as the features on the demo.

I learned lessons the hard way by making the mistakes myself and then watching others make them too. While these lessons come from investment reporting projects, the principles apply to family office technology implementation generally.

If you are about to embark on one, I hope these reflections help you ask better questions, involve the right people earlier, and set yourself up for a smoother path. The investment in getting it right at the start pays off many times over.

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Jessica Parker is the founder of JP Advisory, where she works with family offices as their expert generalist, providing senior expertise and hands-on capacity to move critical work forward. She has seen family offices from three angles: as Group Financial Controller and Finance Lead for a single family office managing a complex global asset base, as an advisor in PwC's Family Office team, and as a solutions architect with a family office reporting platform helping family offices globally design and implement wealth platforms.

Using values to guide governance and strategy AI disrupting wealth management stocks Jobs: senior family office role at Citi vacant Read: how to craft an ‘ethical will’ for future generations Podcast: Networth and Chill Bonus time for family offices

How a family office brand can align family values, strengthen governance and shape legacy.

India Wooldridge, founder of Catalyst advisory.

This week we spoke to India Wooldridge, founder of Catalyst, a boutique advisory that helps family offices embed brand as a strategic asset to align family values, strengthen governance and shape long-term legacy.

Wooldridge began by drawing a sharp distinction between brand and branding: too often, branding is reduced to logos and promotion. Yet in reality, a strong brand is the articulation of who you are, what you stand for and the impact you seek to make. 

And while defining a shared vision and purpose is widely acknowledged as the starting point for a new family office, it’s surprisingly uncommon. 

The JP Morgan 2026 Global Family Office Report released earlier this week stated that only 26% of those surveyed have a defined mission statement, and the consequences of that gap are tangible.

Just a few days ago, we sat with a family office executive who told the familiar tale of the principal’s unsuccessful efforts to include his children in managing the family wealth. While based on good intentions, all the efforts were aligned to his values, not those of his children.

Wooldridge’s background is in global cultural research. She previously led international consumer intelligence at a major advertising network, studying how individuals, families and communities form identity, shape values and make decisions. 

It’s this perspective that has found her unexpectedly working with family offices to help navigate the challenges of transition, family complexity and long-term stewardship.

“I came to the space serendipitously, with two family offices referred to me at the same time. It quickly became clear that an acute understanding of human behaviour was uniquely powerful in the context of family dynamics.”

She also learned fast that the family office industry looks at branding as a dirty word.

“A common misconception is that building a brand means overt promotion or sacrificing privacy. In reality, it is about control. Every family has a brand and a reputation, whether they actively manage it or not. It shows up in the people they hire, the investments they make, the partners they choose and how they engage publicly and privately.”

Wooldridge is emphatic that intentionally crafting a values-driven brand allows families to shape how they are understood in the circles that matter to them, and is a strategic necessity.

“The greatest impact occurs through the collaborative process of defining identity and values. It brings different parts of the family and the office into the same conversation, often for the first time.”

“That shared work breaks down silos and creates genuine alignment, which shows up in how decisions are made around governance, succession, leadership transitions and the allocation of capital. Many families are surprised by how quickly clarity emerges once those conversations are properly structured.”

An insights-driven methodology 

Her work is built around the Values-in-Action System, an insights-driven approach that surfaces beliefs, motivations and dynamics that shape a family across generations. 

It then translates them into clear values and an aligned mission to help guide governance, long-term strategic direction and key moments of change.

“Multi-generational families or their offices typically come to us when priorities have become fragmented, or when decisions around succession, governance or capital keep resurfacing without resolution. These challenges arise when values, intent and execution are not aligned.”

“For individuals establishing offices, our work focuses on defining purpose and the impact they want their wealth and legacy to have, both now and over time. I often say it is better to align the family before aligning the structures.”

A need for non-financial innovation

Wooldridge notes that while family offices are as influenced by family dynamics as much as financial decisions, values are still widely treated as soft or symbolic, sitting alongside governance and investment decisions rather than shaping them.

“New technologies and platforms are clearly transforming the financial side of wealth, but we have yet to see comparable progress in its non-financial dimensions. As the demographic of wealth owners shifts, with more women and rising generations taking on leadership, this gap is becoming increasingly visible.”

Behavioral integration

It’s one thing to surface insights and agree on shared values, but to ensure they consistently shape decisions over time is an entirely separate challenge. 

“The real shift is from implicit assumptions to explicit shared direction, and from reactive decisions to intentional, values-led ones. When that shift occurs, brand becomes a force multiplier, strengthening decision-making, reducing friction and aligning the family and the office around a clear strategic direction that compounds impact and legacy.” 

As a result, much of Wooldridge’s work goes beyond the initial strategy to support families through periods of transition and decision-making.

Work wWork we anticipate will only grow in demand as generational wealth transfers accelerate and more family offices confront the reality that values, not capital alone, determine whether a legacy endures or fragments.

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What to read

Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper by Barry K. Baines is a guide for putting your real legacy on paper. Not assets, but values. Barry Baines walks through how to craft an “ethical will” that passes down beliefs, life lessons, and intentions to children and future generations, alongside the more clinical living will.

What to listen to

Why Generational Wealth is the real Key to Financial Freedom. In this episode of Networth and Chill, host Vivian Tu gets back to basics on what generational wealth actually is.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 60K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. More details here

Partner content by Chirag Nanavati, Managing Director at Asset Vantage.

Every enduring company begins with a problem that refuses to be ignored. 

For us that problem did not surface in a pitch deck or a market study, but inside a family office in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. 

While markets eventually recovered, a structural blind spot was exposed on how complex family wealth was managed.

Despite access to top private banks and advisors, the family office of the UNIDEL Group founder realized they were navigating fragmented data, delayed reporting, opaque products, and unknown risks. 

Their issue was not purely about managing investments but one of overall control and clarity. 

While the family operating business was a global tech and engineering organisation driven by data, the contrast within the family office was stark.

Instead of real-time, integrated systems, they operated off scattered Excel sheets and accounting systems, with no single source of data.

They weren’t alone: with no off-the-shelf solutions on the market, most other family offices had resigned themselves to spreadsheets, QuickBooks, Sage, Xero or other similar fragmented workarounds that were not designed for investment accounting. 

Full-service platforms were built for financial institutions, not families, and only solved either accounting or reporting, not both. 

Building the financial operating system we wish we had 

Having concluded that the system we needed simply did not exist, we did something unconventional: we built it ourselves.

Bringing together software expertise from our technology businesses, inhouse accounting and investment analysts from the family office, and external experts, we developed a platform engineered under the daily operating conditions of a full-service family office. 

Because of this, every feature was shaped by first-hand friction, each workflow stress-tested against real world expectations. 

While the family office software market has evolved considerably in the last decade, there are seven core features that still set Asset Vantage apart, all derived from our foundation of being purpose built from within a working family office.

The seven defining features 

1) Integrated general ledger and performance reporting 

Trust in data is foundational: without it, everything else breaks. A purpose built family office platform delivers one source of truth for the entire balance sheet to eliminate disconnect between accounting books and investment performance. This means faster month-end closes and cleaner audits, and principals that have clear visibility on net worth, exposure, and returns. It provides confidence that “the numbers are right” before making decisions.

2) Designed for complex, multi-entity family wealth 

Family offices are not single portfolios, they’re ecosystems. Generic tools simply don’t understand that, and aren’t built for how complex family wealth is structured. A purpose-built platform handles trusts, SPVs, partnerships, operating companies, foundations, and global accounts. 

It supports intercompany transactions and allocations cleanly, with consolidated views and entity-level drill-downs. Key areas like tax, legal, and reporting workflows should be simplified, and importantly, the software should scale as structures evolve over time 

3) Built to deliver control, clarity, and confidence 

Control equals independence: principals hate flying blind, so being purpose built meant  ownership of data and decision-making. How? Centralizing data from custodians, banks, and advisors to reduce dependency on third-party reports and delays. 

This also enables clear audit trails and transparency, with fewer blind spots across assets and cash - empowering the office to operate proactively, not reactively 

4) Reducing key-person risk and spreadsheet dependency 

Operators will already know this pain intimately. No one wants a billion-dollar office dependent on one elaborate spreadsheet. Institutional knowledge is greater than individual knowledge, so the platform entirely replaces fragile Excel models and manual processes. 

It also removes reliance on “the one person who knows how this works”. It also standardizes workflows across the team to ensure continuity if someone leaves or transitions

5) Timely insight, not month-end surprises 

Speed of insight results in better outcomes. Waiting 30–90 days is operationally unacceptable today: decisions have to be based on today’s reality, not last month’s reports. Being built during real-time operation created a platform that offers near on-demand visibility into liquidity, exposures, and performance, with faster response to capital calls, distributions, or market shifts. 

No more ‘fire-drill reporting’ at period ends, with improved cash planning and allocation decisions, means principals are empowered to act with confidence, not hindsight. 

6) Built for illiquid, alternative, and non-standard assets 

Most family wealth isn’t purely in public markets yet most family office software works like it is. Being purpose built means reflecting what family portfolios actually look like: it seamlessly handles private equity, venture, direct deals, real estate, and operating businesses. 

It tracks capital calls, distributions, waterfalls, and look-through ownership, and supports custom valuations and irregular cash flows. There’s no need for shadow tracking outside the system, since it provides a complete, accurate picture of total wealth. 

 7) Institutional-grade controls without institutional bureaucracy 

As wealth grows, scrutiny grows. Families want controls but at the same time, they don’t want Wall Street complexity. There are software solutions out there that require new employees just to manage! 

A purpose built platform delivers professional rigor without slowing the team down, offering role-based permissions and approvals, clean audit trails for transactions and changes and standardized processes without adding headcount. It enables easier year-end audits and compliance reviews while supporting governance as the office becomes more sophisticated. 

Guided by our origins

When the first version of our platform went live in 2014, it resonated with other family offices immediately. What we had suspected all along was proven: this was not a niche problem, it was a growing universal pain.

Soon we had 25 other family offices using the platform, early adopters that joined as clients and had us realize the potential.

Asset Vantage was formally spun out as an independent wealth technology company to serve family offices, multifamily offices, and their advisors including accounting firms and wealth managers.

Every step we’ve taken since has been focused on delivering a globally scalable and secure cloud-based SaaS solution

This includes our 2017 acquisition of long-established US accounting technology firm Financial Navigator, and moving their clients from a legacy accounting platform to our modern integrated one.

Today, we operate an 80+-member strong global team with a mindset not as a vendor, but as a partner for modern family offices. 

Built from the inside out, our story is still being written but it’s our purpose-built origin that defines us.

-  

Chirag Nanavati is the Managing Director and part of the founding team at Asset Vantage, the financial operating system of choice for more than 400 family offices across 10+ countries, with over US$400B in assets tracked.

Powered by an integrated general ledger and advanced performance reporting, the platform delivers a complete, real-time view of assets, liabilities, and overall total wealth- enabling principals and their trusted advisors to make confident, informed decisions. 

A UNIDEL company, Asset Vantage provides a scalable, secure foundation for comprehensive wealth oversight and operational excellence.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 60K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Financial and non-financial family office benchmarks Latest family office data from JP Morgan Booth School of Business seeking Family Office Initiative leader Read: a guide to aligning personal, family, and organizational value Podcast: a framework to build wealth and buy freedom

How to approach financial and non-financial benchmarking

Family offices should measure themselves against defined benchmarks. 

Without benchmarks, inefficiencies, underperformance, and governance drift can hide in plain sight.

A defining strength of family offices is their long-term time horizon, but long horizons can also blur accountability. Patience should not mean performance goes unmeasured or that benchmarking is ignored.

Today, it’s a look at financial and non-financial benchmarks in family offices. 

The goal of benchmarking

Most financial institutions manage money for others. They compete against peers, live by league tables, and are judged against external benchmarks.

Family offices are different. 

Single family offices manage their own capital. They have their own goals. Success is about meeting their own objectives, not beating an index or peer group.

But benchmarking is still vital. Not to chase rankings, but to ensure the family office is operating effectively. Of course, families will want to understand how their performance compares with others, but the real objective is to ensure their office is disciplined, efficient, and aligned with the family’s long-term goals.

Purpose

Benchmarking should be diagnostic: a way for family offices to surface strengths, blind spots, and internal misalignment.

Family offices today are more complex, more professionalised, but also more exposed to risk than at any point in the past. Against that backdrop, benchmarking has become an essential requirement for durability.

Most family offices think they know how they compare to peers. But in reality, those views are often built on anecdotes, conference chatter, or selective data points.

So what do we actually mean by benchmarking? In practice, benchmarking splits into two dimensions: financial and non-financial. 

Both should be taken seriously.

Financial benchmarking

Let’s start with the easy one. 

Quantitative measures are easier to deal with and most family offices start (and often stop) with financial benchmarking. 

Financial benchmarks may include capital allocation, performance, costs, and liquidity. They are visible, measurable, and comparable.

And while private banks and fund managers don’t always make it easy to crystallize costs and performance, a strong family office can cut through the noise and fairly easily establish whether portfolios are structured sensibly, costs are proportionate, and outcomes are broadly in line with the family’s objectives.

At the portfolio level, the starting point is deceptively simple. Is the investment portfolio meeting its objectives? 

For most families, that means preserving purchasing power and generating real returns over time. In practice, this often translates into benchmarking total returns against inflation plus a margin, or against a cash or risk-free rate as a baseline. 

The question is not actually whether returns are positive, but whether the family is being adequately compensated for the risk it is taking.

Any benchmark must be relevant to the family’s actual investment strategy. A portfolio heavy in private equity should not be judged against a public equity index. A conservative, liquidity-focused mandate should not be compared to an aggressive endowment-style model. Benchmarks that do not reflect the underlying risk profile are useless.

A better approach than comparing headline performance is to benchmark by asset class, analysing how each sleeve performs, how much risk is taken per unit of return, how the portfolio behaves in stressed markets, and whether results are driven by repeatable process or blind luck.

Private markets make this harder. Many family offices still lack clear, agreed benchmarks for private equity, venture capital, or direct investments (for a deep dive on benchmarking private investments, take a look at What to Watch this week).

Without structure, performance discussions in privates can quickly become emotional or political. The best family offices work hard to separate emotion from data. They benchmark each sleeve independently. They track risk alongside return. And they review performance regularly, not just when markets move against them.

Costs and capability

Operating expenses for family offices typically sit somewhere between 50 and 100 basis points of assets under management, with staff costs representing the largest line item. Median headcount remains under ten people, though dispersion is wide depending on complexity, geography, and investment style.

Cost benchmarking is often misunderstood. It’s not about being cheap or cutting costs, it’s about alignment and ensuring the operating model matches the family’s ambitions.

A lean office running complex direct investments may be under-resourced and exposed to key-person risk. A more expensive office with experienced staff, strong controls, and robust reporting may deliver far better value over time. Benchmarking costs helps families ask a more constructive question: does our cost base actually match our ambition?

Continue reading the full article including non-financial benchmarking here…

What to read

Living Your Values by Cynthia D. Scott and Dennis T. Jaffe is a practical guide to aligning personal, family, and organizational values so decisions don’t drift as wealth scales. Less philosophy, more tools, rituals, and conversations to keep purpose intact across generations.

What to listen to

In this episode of The Knowledge Project, author Morgan Housel breaks down the framework he uses to build wealth, minimize financial stress, and buy freedom: your wealth is what you have minus what you want.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 60K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

NAV financing can unlock liquidity for lifestyle changes, relocation costs or property purchases.

Partner content by Alex Branton, Managing Partner at Nodem Capital.

According to Deutsche Bank Wealth Management’s 2025 Family Office Financing Report, 76% of family offices now borrow proactively to strengthen liquidity, rather than waiting until they face an immediate cash need.

This means they consider liquidity solutions such as Net Asset Value (NAV) financing a core part of their investment toolkit, working with specialist firms like Nodem alongside existing banks to secure bespoke, duration-matched facilities. 

How NAV loans work

NAV financing solutions function as subordinated debt (sometimes preferred equity) secured primarily by a private-market portfolio. 

Unlike traditional direct-to-company financing, the primary distinction is that leverage is applied at the diversified portfolio level rather than at the asset level, reducing both costs and risks. 

NAV facilities often utilise Payment-in-Kind (PIK) structures, meaning interest is capitalized and added to the principal rather than paid in cash monthly, which preserves liquidity for investments. 

Banks vs non-bank providers

NAV providers like Nodem step in to complement existing family banking relationships, working on portions of private portfolios that banks struggle to underwrite. 

Solutions are highly bespoke, often without cash interest, and sit subordinate (or alongside) existing banking facilities. ​

Four ways families are using NAV facilities 

1. Replacing loans with fixed interest rates 

Family offices are using NAV facilities to replace loans that have fixed cash interest rates with PIK-based (duration-aligned) NAV loans to avoid the distorting pressure of frequent cash outflows that need to be funded by an illiquid portfolio. Here’s how that can work.

The Problem

A family office had an outstanding €50 million loan with a fixed cash interest rate of 6.5%. This recurring cash drain represented a major opportunity cost.

The Solution

The family office’s leadership sought a financing solution that would allow them to defer interest payments and redeploy the preserved cash into higher-return investments without selling core, long-term assets. They decided to refinance the €50 million loan with a 5-year Payment-in-Kind (PIK) based NAV loan. 

The 20% LTV (loan-to-value) facility required the family office to pledge a €250 million portion of its private investment portfolio as collateral. 

The Results

The 5-year facility term (with a 2-year optional extension) provided a clear window for the family office to execute its strategic objectives while preserving liquidity and avoiding quarterly cash interest obligations. 

The refinancing immediately eliminated the €3.25 million cash interest payments, resulting in a cumulative cash preservation of €16.25 million over the 5-year term. This capital was then available for reinvestment into higher-growth opportunities. 

The family office's decision was predicated on the belief that its reinvestment strategy would generate returns exceeding the PIK cost, with deferred payments allowing the family to pursue investments with higher return potential.

2. Increasing exposure to portfolio winners

NAV loans provide non-dilutive capital that is accretive when the underlying asset's growth exceeds the facility's cost of capital.

The Problem 

A prominent European family office with a successful €200 million investment holding company aimed to accelerate its growth through new acquisitions. Their portfolio consisted of mature businesses, but the investment team found that securing financing for each new acquisition individually was expensive and inflexible (interest rates, cash-pay interest, and time-to-money).

The Solution

They secured a facility against the combined net asset value of their portfolio companies, allowing the investment team to obtain capital at a more favourable rate than individual company-level debt. 

To align with its conservative investment philosophy, the family office decided on a 25% LTV ratio. They secured a €50 million NAV facility, representing a 25% LTV against its €200 million portfolio. The facility had a 5-year term and a fixed Payment-in-Kind (PIK) interest rate.

The Result

The €50 million NAV facility provided the capital for a period of steady, controlled growth and the family office was able to act on attractive opportunities. The lower cost (and increased flexibility) of capital compared to individual loans enhanced the returns on its new investments. 

Over a 5-year period, the portfolio’s value grew 2x, significantly outperforming the organic growth that would have been achieved without the NAV facility.

3. Meeting capital calls easily

NAV financing allows families to efficiently unlock value from mature investments, helping them meet new capital calls. 

The Problem 

A diversified European family office with a €300 million portfolio balanced between Venture Capital (VC) and Private Equity (PE) faced a sudden liquidity challenge. One of their top-tier VC funds issued a large, sooner-than-expected capital call to seize a rare investment opportunity in a company founded by a multi-unicorn founder. 

The family office received a €45 million capital call from its VC fund, due in 30 days. While the family office was confident in the investment, it did not have sufficient unallocated cash to meet such a large, unexpected call. The alternative—selling liquid assets or defaulting on the capital call—was highly unattractive. 

Defaulting would damage the family's reputation and result in the forfeiture of a potentially lucrative investment, while a forced sale of other assets could trigger tax liabilities and disrupt the portfolio's strategic allocation.

The Solution

They secured a €45 million NAV facility, representing a conservative 15% Loan-to-Value (LTV) against its €300 million portfolio. This facility was structured with a 5-year term and a fixed PIK interest rate. The low LTV ensured quick internal approval and favourable terms, while the PIK feature preserved the family's operational cash flow.

The family office's strategy was built on three layers of risk mitigation. (1) Immediate Liquidity: The NAV facility provided the instant cash needed to meet the capital call. (2) Primary Repayment Source: The anticipated distributions from the PE portfolio were earmarked for repaying the facility. (3) Secondary Repayment Source: The portfolio of other liquid assets served as a reliable fallback, ensuring the facility could be repaid even in a worst-case scenario where PE distributions were delayed.

The Result:

As expected, the PE portfolio began generating distributions, which were used to service and pay down the NAV facility. The loan was fully repaid within the planned 3-year window.

4. Unlocking liquidity for unexpected bills  

Families are using NAV financing to unlock liquidity for unexpected tax bills. They can also use it for lifestyle changes, relocation costs or property purchases. 

The Problem 

A well-diversified US family office with a large private portfolio suddenly faced an expected tax bill. The family had already leveraged its public portfolio and wanted to avoid anything drastic, such as a fire sale of its private assets. 

The Solution

A NAV facility is deemed to be mathematically superior to taking a 30%-50% discount on a hurried asset sale. The family’s bank would only offer a monthly interest loan, so they approached a NAV provider that could provide the capital via a PIK-based preferred equity solution, secured by the family’s broader portfolio, to meet the urgent tax bill. 

This also has the effect of providing sufficient runway to sell down assets in the secondary market in a timelier fashion to maximise prices. 

The Results

The family gained quick access to the exact amount of capital needed without short-term cash pay interest requirements associated with banking solutions. The family also appointed an advisor to wind down a portfolio of weaker assets in the interim to pay down the facility over the next 24 months. 

When is a strategic NAV-based liquidity solution suitable?

If a family office is looking to refinance, grow, rebalance or unlock liquidity, a NAV facility could be a fit, particularly if the office has:

• Time-sensitive liquidity needs, with a significant portion of wealth in private market assets (PE, VC, real estate or direct holdings).

• Existing facilities that are draining cash via regular interest payments.

• A need for bespoke financing that works alongside, rather than replacing, your existing banking relationships.

If this is something of value, the best way to understand how much liquidity you could unlock from your existing private portfolio is to speak directly to a NAV financing specialist for a confidential, no-obligation portfolio review.

-

Alex Branton is the Managing Partner at Nodem Capital, a leading investment firm that delivers tailored Net Asset Value (NAV) financing solutions to GPs, LPs, and Family Offices. The firm underwrites and provides facilities against complex baskets of illiquid global assets.

Led by Branton, a Cambridge Associates alumnus, Nodem Capital is authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority and backed by leading institutional investors, including the Lepercq Group. The size of their solutions ranges from $20m to over $100m.

Disclaimer: These examples are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute financial or legal advice. The case studies presented are hypothetical and simplified illustrations of a complex financial instrument. It is not intended to be representative of all situations and should not be relied upon for investment decisions.

Partner with Mr Family Office Reach 60K+ family office community professionals & UHNWIs. Across 𝕏, LinkedIn and the newsletter, Mr Family Office connects with an engaged global family office audience. Find out more

Family offices should measure themselves against defined benchmarks. 

Without benchmarks, inefficiencies, underperformance, and governance drift can hide in plain sight.

A defining strength of family offices is their long-term time horizon, but long horizons can also blur accountability. Patience should not mean performance goes unmeasured or that benchmarking is ignored.

Today, it’s a look at financial and non-financial benchmarks in family offices. 

The goal of benchmarking

Most financial institutions manage money for others. They compete against peers, live by league tables, and are judged against external benchmarks.

Family offices are different. 

Single family offices manage their own capital. They have their own goals. Success is about meeting their own objectives, not beating an index or peer group.

But benchmarking is still vital. Not to chase rankings, but to ensure the family office is operating effectively. Of course, families will want to understand how their performance compares with others, but the real objective is to ensure their office is disciplined, efficient, and aligned with the family’s long-term goals.

Purpose

Benchmarking should be diagnostic: a way for family offices to surface strengths, blind spots, and internal misalignment.

Family offices today are more complex, more professionalised, but also more exposed to risk than at any point in the past. Against that backdrop, benchmarking has become an essential requirement for durability.

Most family offices think they know how they compare to peers. But in reality, those views are often built on anecdotes, conference chatter, or selective data points.

So what do we actually mean by benchmarking? In practice, benchmarking splits into two dimensions: financial and non-financial. 

Both should be taken seriously.

Financial benchmarking

Let’s start with the easy one. 

Quantitative measures are easier to deal with and most family offices start (and often stop) with financial benchmarking. 

Financial benchmarks may include capital allocation, performance, costs, and liquidity. They are visible, measurable, and comparable.

And while private banks and fund managers don’t always make it easy to crystallize costs and performance, a strong family office can cut through the noise and fairly easily establish whether portfolios are structured sensibly, costs are proportionate, and outcomes are broadly in line with the family’s objectives.

At the portfolio level, the starting point is deceptively simple. Is the investment portfolio meeting its objectives? 

For most families, that means preserving purchasing power and generating real returns over time. In practice, this often translates into benchmarking total returns against inflation plus a margin, or against a cash or risk-free rate as a baseline. 

The question is not actually whether returns are positive, but whether the family is being adequately compensated for the risk it is taking.

Any benchmark must be relevant to the family’s actual investment strategy. A portfolio heavy in private equity should not be judged against a public equity index. A conservative, liquidity-focused mandate should not be compared to an aggressive endowment-style model. Benchmarks that do not reflect the underlying risk profile are useless.

A better approach than comparing headline performance is to benchmark by asset class, analysing how each sleeve performs, how much risk is taken per unit of return, how the portfolio behaves in stressed markets, and whether results are driven by repeatable process or blind luck.

Private markets make this harder. Many family offices still lack clear, agreed benchmarks for private equity, venture capital, or direct investments.

Without structure, performance discussions in privates can quickly become emotional or political. The best family offices work hard to separate emotion from data. They benchmark each sleeve independently. They track risk alongside return. And they review performance regularly, not just when markets move against them.

Costs and capability

Operating expenses for family offices typically sit somewhere between 50 and 100 basis points of assets under management, with staff costs representing the largest line item. Median headcount remains under ten people, though dispersion is wide depending on complexity, geography, and investment style.

Cost benchmarking is often misunderstood. It’s not about being cheap or cutting costs, it’s about alignment and ensuring the operating model matches the family’s ambitions.

A lean office running complex direct investments may be under-resourced and exposed to key-person risk. A more expensive office with experienced staff, strong controls, and robust reporting may deliver far better value over time. Benchmarking costs helps families ask a more constructive question: does our cost base actually match our ambition?

Liquidity and resilience

One of the most important shifts in financial benchmarking over recent years has been around liquidity.

More family offices are now stress-testing cash flows, modelling prolonged downturns, and assessing their ability to fund family needs across generations. 

This reflects a broader change in mindset. Away from maximizing returns at all costs. Towards building resilience.

Liquidity benchmarking goes beyond cash on hand. It’s about understanding where liquidity really sits in the portfolio, how quickly it can be accessed under stress, and how dependent the family is on market conditions remaining benign.

In many cases, there is the difference between a portfolio that looks robust on paper and one that proves resilient in reality.

Non-financial benchmarking

OK, now the hard part. 

Qualitative benchmarking is decidedly harder than quantitative benchmarking. Non-financial benchmarking involves opinions, feelings and experiences. While financial benchmarks are tangible, non-financial benchmarks measure the intangibles that truly decide longevity. 

Non-financial benchmarking can be achieved through surveys, workshops, interviews and open conversations. 

Non-financial benchmarking often receives less fanfare, but it’s arguably more predictive of whether a family office will endure for generations.

Effective non-financial benchmarking doesn’t ask if structures and systems exist, they ask how those structures and systems are experienced. 

That distinction is key. Many families assume governance is working because they have family councils or mission statements. But benchmarking often uncovers gaps: differing perceptions across generations, branches, or roles. And those gaps are early warning signals.

Governance quality

Non-financial benchmarking focuses on the quality of governance, not just the existence of governance structures. 

The goal isn’t optics, it’s substance. 

Are boards independent and empowered?
Is decision-making transparent?
Are shareholder agreements clear and liquidity policies defined? 

Families that score well here rely less on informal understandings and more on explicit frameworks that function as intended. These are the structures that endure through leadership transitions and periods of emotional stress.

Human capital and the next generation

Perhaps the most under-benchmarked asset is human capital. 

It’s often the weakest link. Successful multi-generational families invest early in next-gen development: financially, psychologically, and practically. 

Benchmarking here looks at education pathways, exposure to responsibility, mentorship, and readiness for ownership. 

Families who neglect this often realize (too late) that wealth transfer can spark anxiety and even the ultimate dissolution of the family office.

Culture

We say it often: culture eats everything in family offices. 

Culture is vital but also extremely hard to quantify. But it’s not impossible to benchmark. High-functioning families share traits: open dialogue, tolerance for disagreement, and a shared language around wealth and responsibility. 

All families fight, but the goal of a strong culture isn’t to avoid conflict, it’s to handle it well. You can’t see culture in a spreadsheet, but you can measure how it shows up in practice.

So how do you actually benchmark culture? Start with simple tools: conduct anonymous family surveys about communication satisfaction, run workshops where family members define what “healthy disagreement” looks like, or assess how decisions are made under stress. Some families even benchmark by inviting independent facilitators to observe key meetings and offer feedback.

Benchmarking for enduring family offices

Financial benchmarking tells you how your portfolio is performing. 

Non-financial benchmarking tells you whether your people, structures, and capabilities can sustain that performance. 

Families that endure take both seriously. They measure. They reflect. They adjust. 

For family offices, benchmarking should not be about keeping up with peers. It should be about building a family office that can adapt, endure, and remain coherent as complexity grows.

-

Initial xStocks included over 55 tokenized stocks & ETFs.

Partner content by Solana.

For many people around the world, buying U.S. stocks is slow, expensive, or simply impractical. 

Equity markets operate on limited hours and require investors to navigate intermediaries and paperwork. Settlement traditionally can take several days, adding friction for anyone looking to invest, locking out potential investors.

But what if a share could move like a token? 

What if those tokens could be held in a digital wallet, moved in under a second, and used inside other financial apps? That’s the promise behind xStocks.

Tokenized stocks give non-U.S. traders financial exposure to shares and can be used as collateral or moved between platforms 24/7. This opens up new strategies and new kinds of liquidity.

That’s what xStocks has enabled.

xStocks was first launched in June 2025 on Solana, the​ high-performance network that enables fast, secure, and affordable digital transactions. 

The initial list included over 55 tokenized stocks & ETFs, including household names like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, Meta, and more became tradable on Solana. xStocks tickers end with an “x” such as NVDAx (Nvidia) and AMZNx (Amazon).

Buying xStocks is like buying any token on Solana, and can be done on trusted, centralized exchanges like Kraken or Bybit.

Advantages Over Traditional Stock Trading and Brokerage Models for Users

xStocks democratizes access to traditional equities, and users gain global market access without brokerage barriers. 

This is important, since classic paths to wealth, like index funds and stock investment, have historically been gatekept to certain geographies.

xStocks enables non-U.S. users around the world to easily invest in tokenized versions of U.S. stocks.

Beyond that, it unlocks further possibilities:

• xStocks can be traded continuously on Solana. Self-custody enables 24/7 trading on-chain. There is instant settlement as the trades execute on-chain immediately rather than waiting for clearing houses.

• Each xStock can be divided on-chain. So that gives the flexibility of fractional ownership, which otherwise would have been prohibitive. Users can start with a small amount without having to buy a whole share. There is no minimum amount and no management fees.

• The composability also means xStocks can be used as collateral, lent, or pooled. This unlocks new yield strategies that do not exist in legacy finance.

Imagine someone in Brazil buys $50 of AAPLx at night. They can instantly use part of that position as collateral to borrow stablecoins and supply the remainder into a liquidity pool and earn fees. All within minutes. No broker. No settlement delays.

This represents a fundamental expansion of what stock ownership can accomplish beyond traditional buy-and-hold strategies.

xStocks helps fulfill the vision of bringing Wall Street to the blockchain, where regulated equity exposure merges with crypto’s programmability.

How do xStocks Work?

The basic idea of xStocks is simple: each stock is tokenized as an SPL token that anyone with a digital wallet in allowed jurisdictions can buy, hold, and use. But under the hood, it has a lot of moving parts.

The issuance of xStocks happens under a regulated framework.

1. Share Acquisition - Backed purchases actual shares of companies like Tesla or Apple through traditional brokers and deposits them with a regulated custodian.

2. Token Minting - For every real share held in custody, Backed mints exactly one SPL token on Solana. So 1 Tesla share equals 1 TSLAx token. This keeps the supply tied to real holdings maintaining a strict 1:1 backing ratio.

3. Trading Ready - Chainlink runs dedicated data feeds to provide prices and corporate actions like dividends and splits. In the current xStocks design, the dividends are automatically reinvested into token balances.

Launch and Early Traction

Since launch in June 2025, there has been fast adoption.

Within the first month, trading volumes crossed more than $300 million. And by the 6th week, the cumulative volume had crossed $2.1billion.

By November, xStocks had surpassed $10 billion in combined centralized and decentralized exchange transaction volume. 

The Global Opportunity

Global equity market capitalization is over $120 trillion, and though tokenization targets a small slice at first, the opportunity is that full value.

As a technology evolution, they address three primary market segments with distinct value propositions.

• Non-U.S. residents. They represent the largest addressable market. These users gain easier access to U.S. equities without traditional brokerage account barriers.

• Crypto-native investors. They want equity exposure that lives inside DeFi. For such users, self-custody, 24/7 access, and composability are important.

• Retail investors. Fractional ownership, weekend trading, and instant settlement make investing cheaper and more flexible for small ticket sizes.

The broader pitch is familiar to the “Internet Capital Markets” thesis, with tokenization reducing the gates between capital and people to expand participation.

xStocks can be viewed as a meaningful, practical step toward bringing traditional markets onto the blockchain and narrowing the gap between TradFi and DeFi.

It delivers access to people who previously couldn't reach U.S. markets, to widen the investor base. And it delivers new ways to use ownership, since a share now becomes a tool that you can borrow against, use in yield strategies, or move fractional pieces across apps. 

xStocks let public equities behave like tokens, representing a major upgrade for traditional market infrastructure. 

With its early mover position, partnerships with exchanges, and use of Solana’s fast rails, there is room for xStocks to evolve into something extraordinary.

-

Solana is the leading high performance network powering internet capital markets, payments, and crypto applications. A global network of computers with nodes connected worldwide processing transactions instantly, it is the fastest growing and leading financial platform, with the most users, the most developers, and the most trading activity.

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Partner content by Solana.

In December, Visa took a meaningful step toward integrating stablecoins into mainstream finance by enabling USDC settlement in the United States. US issuer and acquirer partners can now settle directly with Visa in USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle.

This news means issuers can benefit from faster funds movement over blockchains, seven‑day availability and enhanced operational resilience across weekends and holidays - without any change to the consumer card experience.

“Visa is expanding stablecoin settlement because our banking partners are not only asking about it - they’re preparing to use it,” said Rubail Birwadker, Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships, Visa. 

Stablecoins on the rise

While family offices are still slow to add cryptocurrencies in their portfolios - the JP Morgan 2026 Global Family Office Report noting 89% have no crypto exposure - the move from Visa highlights how financial institutions are looking for faster, programmable settlement options that integrate seamlessly with their existing treasury operations, and how blockchain solutions can provide these.

It also reflects the shift in sentiment and regulatory stance towards stablecoins. The GENIUS Act was signed in July last year, aiming to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins. 

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that are backed by assets considered to be reliable such as a national currency or a commodity. The $300 billion sector is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028, hence the increased urgency to provide services built around dollar-based digital currency.

Institutional integration 

With Visa bringing USDC settlement to the US, it delivers a reliable, bank‑ready capability that improves treasury efficiency while maintaining security, compliance and resiliency standards.

Initial banking participants of the new Visa stablecoin service include Cross River Bank and a16z-backed Lead Bank, who have started settling with Visa in USDC over the Solana blockchain. 

Last year, Visa’s monthly stablecoin settlement volume passed a $3.5 billion annualized run rate, a significant milestone since Visa became one of the first major networks to settle transactions in a stablecoin in 2023. 

Visa first experimented with USDC settlement in 2021. Circle, the company behind USDC, emphasized the importance of integrating fully-reserved stablecoins into institutional settlement flows. 

“Bringing USDC settlement to the U.S. with Visa is a milestone for internet native money moving at the speed of software,” said Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Circle. “It helps card-issuing financial institutions modernize treasury and unlock new services while retaining the transparency and trust that USDC is known for.”

Visa bringing stablecoin payments mainstream is just another way blockchain technology can add value to legacy banking systems.

Unified platforms that support both stablecoins and traditional payment networks are seen by many insiders as the likely foundation for the future of banking technology.

Find out more on the Visa USDC settlement service here.

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Solana is the leading high performance network powering internet capital markets, payments, and crypto applications. A global network of computers with nodes connected worldwide processing transactions instantly, it is the fastest growing and leading financial platform, with the most users, the most developers, and the most trading activity.

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Partner content by Andreas Hadjioannou, Founder and CEO, Nomuscapital 

Forbes recently highlighted that family offices are moving away from traditional trusts as wealth preservation structures and are increasingly embracing new models for structuring and managing their investments effectively, such as Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), Private Funds or often hybrid structures.

Anyone familiar with SPVs understands the clear benefits they can provide, notably their ability to ringfence risk and to simplify exits.

The market for SPV services is already over $12B and expected to reach $20B by 2033, so expect to hear more SPV-related news. However, SPVs are just one option for modern family offices to consider.

Ultra-wealthy families and individuals looking for efficient, global-minded ways to protect their growing assets are increasingly looking beyond private banks and institutional wealth managers for solutions. 

And while family offices are all unique, in our experience we’ve found that they often face similar challenges when it comes to structuring complex multigenerational wealth and investment portfolios. 

What exactly are these challenges?

They vary greatly, but one thing is consistent: as the global footprint of family-owned enterprises and family members expands, the need for more personalized solutions becomes unavoidable and in fact critical for effective management and control of their assets and investments.

Understanding this is what led Nomuscapital to embrace a hybrid model in our offering, positioning ourselves as a partner that is both a capable service provider and a regulated investment manager. 

Exactly how this works is best illustrated through some of the ways we help family offices today.

Tailored investment structures 

Even the most accomplished finance veterans need the right partners: we recently assisted an individual whose career spanned three decades across Japan, London, New York and the Emirates.

This involved setting up three investment SPVs to manage his diverse investment activity in listed securities. Each SPV maintains multiple private bank accounts in Luxembourg, London and Switzerland, which we support as the signatory and instructing party on all investment activity.

This means we work closely with the external investment advisor appointed by the principal to place and manage orders, and manage the overall portfolio held by each vehicle with the time sensitivity that capital markets require. 

Frictionless operations across jurisdictions

An Austrian family office diversifying across the United Kingdom, United States and Emirates was also entering multiple new industries, from mining and foodtech startups to AI projects.

This cross-border and broad nature of investment activity required several relationships in order to optimize investment flows, with SPVs established in Cyprus, Hong Kong, Wyoming and the United Kingdom. 

For each entity, we provided qualified directors to ensure statutory filings, monitor the investment requirements, and to review and sign transaction documents together with the family office legal team. 

The end result: each entity is properly maintained and operates in good standing,with up to date financial and legal records, for fast and reliable decision-making by the family office for the duration of the holding period of each investment. 

Operating company support

Sometimes it’s less about the needs of the family and more about their relationship with an operating company, as was the case when we were contacted by the owner of a prominent listed software group in Europe.

We helped his family office establish the main holding company, which holds the stake in the listed entity, and continue to support through participation in annual general meetings, managing key issues and regulatory filings, plus liaising with investment banks, investors and other key stakeholders in the listed entity.

Investment committees and dealflow

A United Kingdom-based family office that manages over $300 million across mostly real estate, private credit, renewables and venture capital required support from investment vehicle structuring and governance to succession planning. 

Using our AIFM license, we’re setting up a private fund that will become the family’s global investment vehicle. Designed to offer better corporate governance mechanisms, it also provides wider access to investment channels and co-investment flexibility for their family office investment partners. 

The platform is purpose-built to empower the next generation to become involved in the investment activity and management of assets, initially by communicating and providing investment reports to them and then gradually adding them as investment committee members. This will allow them to express their investment views without losing sight of the Fund’s overarching risk management rules and asset allocation strategy which sits at the core. 

Corporate structure and tax strategy

Having a trusted partner that can provide both family business ownership and structuring solutions as well as investment services usually makes sense for family offices.

We recently assisted a software entrepreneur restructure the operational business and create a family office structure that owns the intellectual property through an entity in Cyprus, bringing preferential tax treatment and elements to manage the next stage of growth. 

In addition, we helped the family relocate to Cyprus under the appropriate permits, even assisting with schools and other critical aspects of their relocation.

Dynamic solutions for dynamic families

These examples help illustrate how family offices need tailored solutions to the challenges they face, and why working with a strategic partner that covers multiple needs brings added benefits. 

A modern service group with technology as a cornerstone, Nomuscapital deliberately takes this hybrid approach to offer more sophisticated structuring, solidify investment activity, support effective governance and ensure accurate investment monitoring.

And as family offices continue to grow and professionalize, we will continue to support them with the personalized solutions they need to evolve.

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Andreas Hadjioannou is the Founder and CEO, Nomuscapital, a strategic partner to global family offices. Nomuscapital provides bespoke solutions at the family, business, and ownership levels, each tailored to strengthen family relationships and enhance business effectiveness and investment objectives.

Discover more at nomuscapital.com

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Despite the concerns, few family offices and businesses take advanced precautions.

Cybersecurity is boring, an IT concern, right? Something to deal with when necessary. Nothing has happened yet, so nothing will likely happen.

A bit like saying you don’t wear your seatbelt because you’ve never had a car accident.

Deloitte Private just published their family business cybersecurity report this week and it echoes findings from their family office report just over a year ago.

Key findings read almost identically: cyberattacks are widespread, attacks are varied in nature, and there’s a need for more than basic defenses. 

The latter is particularly interesting, since despite cybersecurity becoming such a risk, frequently causing measurable financial, operational and reputational damage, there is still a big gap between stated concerns and taking effective precautions.

We spoke with Dr. Rebecca Gooch, Global Head of Insights at Deloitte Private and author of both the family office and family business insights series, to understand why this gap persists and how family businesses and offices are affected differently.

“The biggest difference is the scale of exposure and impact. Family businesses are significantly more likely to experience a cyberattack than family offices, which more commonly operate under the radar,” says Gooch, noting the new Deloitte Private report reflects 74% of family businesses have experienced a cyberattack, compared to 43% of family offices - still a significant amount. 

Also noteworthy is that damage caused by family businesses cybersecurity incidents is more severe.

“Of the family businesses which have been attacked, nearly all claim to have suffered some form of financial, operational or reputational damage. In family offices, it’s closer to one in three.” 

Prevention requires advanced measures such as third-party cybersecurity specialists and threat monitoring systems, yet most family offices and businesses only take basic precautions. 

Strong passwords, multi-factor authentication and software updates won’t stop advanced malware or hackers using sophisticated phishing methods that catch employees unawares.

“The biggest misconception is that cyber risk is mainly about technology. In reality, it’s often  about people and processes. Most successful attacks don’t start with sophisticated code – they start with a human being clicking on something they shouldn’t or trusting someone they shouldn’t.”

Gooch says the real differentiator isn’t always firewalls or software, but rather culture: training, awareness, governance and how quickly issues are escalated.

That culture isn’t prevalent in most family offices: Deloitte Private’s previous report showed only around a third of family offices had done a cybersecurity maturity assessment. 

“There can sometimes be a perception that cyberattacks are not a serious risk because cybersecurity can suffer from a visibility problem. When it works, nothing happens. There’s no obvious return on investment, so it’s easy to deprioritise.” 

“Many leaders still see it as an IT issue rather than a wider business risk. Until something goes wrong, it feels abstract. But once an organisation is hit, it very quickly becomes a board-level and even family-level issue. It’s classic risk psychology – people underestimate low-frequency, high-impact events until they experience one personally.”

One such account shared in the new Deloitte Private report is from a family business CEO stating the direct cost of a cybersecurity incident they experienced was $2 million - nothing abstract about that number!

Read the full Deloitte Private Family Business Cybersecurity report 

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In this episode of Capital Allocators with Ted Seides, Lane MacDonald, CIO of SCS Financial, traces his path from US Olympic hockey player to CIO of a platform with approximately $46 billion AUM. Lane shares lessons from private equity, endowments, and family offices on what separates great investors from good ones.

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Patient capital provides a major advantage in this growing asset class.

Image caption

Sports investing has become big business, with the 50 most valuable sports teams today worth $353 billion globally and growing fast.

This list is led by the Dallas Cowboys, who were valued at $5 billion six years ago and are now worth $13 billion.

Over the last decade, average revenue growth for NBA and NFL franchises was 141% and 91% respectively.

Market growth is driving deal activity, with celebrities and sports stars getting in on the action.

Michael Jordan sold his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets, netting over $2 billion from a $275 million investment 13 years earlier.

Hollywood duo Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney investing in then non-league UK soccer club Wrexham AFC has rocketed the club's profile, its on-field fortunes as well as its valuation (from $2.5 million to a reported $475 million in five years).

The two also invested in Alpine Formula 1 team alongside fellow actor Michael B. Jordan and sports stars like Patrick Mahomes and Rory McIlroy.

Family offices are heavily involved too. Goldman Sachs’ 2025 Family Office Investment Insights report highlighted that 25% of family offices are already invested in sports, with 25% keen to pursue sports investment, numbers that reflect the attractive nature of a growing asset class at the intersection of investment focus and personal interest.

Last year alone, wealthy families invested in marquee teams like LA Lakers, New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers.

And while men’s leagues dominate sports investing, women’s leagues are growing fast, notably led in the US by soccer, with the San Diego Wave club recently purchased by a family office.

The rise in value of the world’s most valuable sports team (Dallas Cowboys) alongside the rising cutoff value just to make the top 50.

Private Equity has entered the chat

Perhaps the biggest difference of late has been the private equity effect. As leagues open up to institutional investment, PE firms have purchased stakes in teams in the top top leagues of most sports.

Last year Apollo Global launched a dedicated sports investment fund, which has already purchased a majority ownership stake in Spanish club Atletico Madrid (and a stake in Wrexham AFC).  

But sports investing is also complicated, with leagues having their own regulations, each team its own unpredictable intricacies and beyond this, value comes from more than team performance (the Dallas Cowboys last won the superbowl 30 years ago).

Ego and emotion complicate things, and unlike most asset classes, just having the funds doesn’t enable a successful acquisition.

This was highlighted this week when we spoke to veteran financier Laurie Pinto whose boutique sports investment agency Pinto Capital specializes in discrete transactions.

“Sport cannot have traditional financial metrics applied to it without context, nuance and emotion built in from the very beginning,” says Pinto, adding that nearly all non-US sports assets are loss-making.

“Therefore we have to look under the lid, in the backrooms and on the pitch to come to reasonable and rational valuations for all parties. Every deal is different and no model can be replicated.”

Pinto highlights that private equity has brought a new level of sophistication that wasn’t always there.

“When I started in sports M&A after 30 years in institutional finance, the space was undeveloped and was a wild west filled with vanity investments. I quickly noticed an expertise gap in the way sophisticated deal structures were taking place, or weren’t! From debt financing to equity incentives, there was a general lack of how financial models could be applied to sports investing.”

Laurie Pinto, Founder of Pinto Capital

With the asset class having proven itself, Pinto Capital now works with everyone from single family offices to private equity and venture capital funds, as well as institutional investors.

“We are solely execution-focused and place a high value on client service and discretion, all of which are needed to ultimately get deals done.”

Pinto notes that the complex nature of transactions together with a common misunderstanding that capital alone wins deals means first-time family offices should take a measured approach.

“First time investors should take time to develop a clear thesis on sports investing: what is their view on how the sport will evolve in the investment period and which type of sports asset complements this thesis? For example, real estate-driven sports assets, horizontal player trading, distressed investments, or one-club cities.”

“General perspectives yield general results. We work with our clients to help them develop their investment thesis before executing on this with a hyper-specific strategy.”

He mentions that family office clients are usually a pleasure as they can build meaningful and lasting relationships, and from his experience make decisions swiftly, with a clear vision.

When it comes to sourcing opportunities for clients, Pinto Capital works across most major professional sports assets in the UK, Europe, US, and relies entirely on their established relationships.

“We curate and nurture our expansive network; as a result a large majority of opportunities are referred to us. We can discretely and strategically reach any club with whom an investor wants to speak.”

Patience is considered an advantageous characteristic of most family offices, and from Pinto’s perspective, this particularly suits the nuanced nature of sports investments.

“The art of the deal is exactly that - fine strokes, shades of grey and waiting for the paint to dry can get you the club you really want.”

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Costco was Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time. This insightful study of how seemingly opposite characteristics can combine to create incredible company value. A fascinating episode of the Acquired podcast.