Wealth advisors round the globe are asking, “How do we connect with our clients in a meaningful way, when we can’t be in the same room?” In this new world of increasing virtual reality, screen fatigue is real, and advisors have had to quickly pivot and rethink how to meet the needs of clients, while building trust and staying connected.Even before the Covid era, clients and families were borderless, located around the world. The truth is, although the pandemic forced this increase of virtual experiences, forward-thinking businesses see this as an opportunity for relationship building over the ...

The top three best practices in developing relationships are active listening, emotional intelligence, and building trust. Neuroscientific research on oxytocin – the trust and relationship molecule – reminds us that in every initial interaction with a human being we have two subconscious questions:Do I trust this person?How do I get them to trust me?An innovator in the ultra wealth industry for 30 years, Milton Pedraza, CEO at the Luxury Institute, LLC, promotes achieving not just good, but excellence, in the wealth advisor field. Pedraza believes this is singlehandedly accomplished through cr...

In today’s fast-paced and media-driven environment, wealth advisors see themselves as everything from a trusted partner to an educator to a financial therapist. Today’s advisors must be great listeners, crisis managers and transparent communicators. They must have a high IQ, and an equally high EQ. They must provide accurate, quick information to clients, and also be excellent facilitators of dialogue and connectors of goals and dreams.Savvy advisors are leaning in and embracing these new aspects of their role with clients. They also realize that clients themselves are evolving in a multitude ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has undeniably impacted client service across the globe. As various trends emerge from this new normal, one issue wealth management firms must address is technology. How are the most successful firms approaching technology and innovation? And is my firm on the right track?The pandemic proved the necessity of serving clients digitally. In the last three months we have seen a decade’s worth of technology come to life. The flip to digitization within the wealth management industry happened quickly. Firms who are laser focused on innovation and technology report a smoother jo...

In June, the IRS announced that it will begin a new campaign to audit hundreds of high net worth individuals after they reopen their offices on July 15th, 2020. To learn about who should be concerned and what to do, Scott Winget, Enterprise Market Leader for Family Office Exchange interviews Leigh Griffith, a partner with Waller Law. Leigh recently wrote a related article, entitled “New IRS Coordinated High Wealth Audit” which is available in FOX's Advisor Thinking section of the website. Subscribe to FOXCast on Apple Podcasts here. Listen Now:...

What is the biggest impact your solution is having on family offices? Sage Intacct is a best-in-class cloud accounting and financial management software solution that provides powerful, measurable value to family offices. One family office, a real estate investment firm, gained vastly increased revenue using Sage to more quickly conduct monthly closes and consolidate books. The firm’s asset valuation process is now must faster and can run every quarter versus annually. Another office now conducts their consolidations in seconds versus weeks, and has increased financial visibility and operabil...

What are the primary business challenges that your solution addresses? Founded originally by a family office 130 years ago, Northern Trust is a global financial services company, serving clients across the US and throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Northern provides holistic family office technology, coupled with deep expertise in custody, fiduciary, investment management and banking to 500 of the most sophisticated high net worth families. This allows for a comprehensive, integrated and customized approach for each family office. Click to learn more about Northern Trust ...

What is the biggest impact your solution is having in family offices? Masttro is a wealth management financial technology company, originally developed by a global multi-generational family office. Today the technology is used by a diverse group of family offices across 24 countries. The platform offers a comprehensive and interactive view of total net worth, across all financial and non-financial assets. Masttro technology empowers clients to access real-time information to make efficient, informed and data-driven decisions, thereby operating their family enterprise in a more cost-effective ...

What are the primary business challenges that your solution addresses?Knowledger is a technology tool that efficiently moves data from a custodian source, housing the data, and creates all the journal entries into your general ledger. Knowledger provides a digital solution to manage the massive amount of data to be entered into a firm’s general ledger, making this process considerably faster. The firm therefore doesn’t need staff for this task, nor do they need to outsource it, as the technology provides quicker and more accurate results.Click to learn more about Knowledger and the FOX Family ...

What is the biggest impact your solution is having in family offices? SEI Family Office Services is a technology and outsourcing provider using the Archway PlatformSM to aggregate family assets and serve as a central data hub for accounting and back office services. By providing families with integrated data aggregation, families can have answers to key questions about their whole wealth picture quickly and efficiently. SEI provides a single source of truth for all family information, including personal assets, real estate and more. All entities can be accounted for on this single ...

What are the primary business challenges that your solution addresses? Addepar is a reporting solution for a broad range of advisor and family office needs, with the ability to provide a comprehensive but also simplified picture of complex wealth. Their technology is distinctive in how it recognizes very unique investments, like private equity, hedge funds and those things which are more common in the family office. Importantly, Addepar addresses how to structure and link the different entities, complex legal structures and investments involved in a family office, giving a broad under...

At first glance, news about the art market appears ominous: fairs have been canceled, auction houses have cut salaries, and closed borders have reduced trade. But dramatic headlines don’t paint the whole picture: auction houses have pivoted to selling online, dealers and fairs have created virtual galleries, and online selling venues have witnessed an uptick in traffic. While there is much speculation about the current state of the art market, data points are scarce. What is clear is that there is an abundance of opportunities for collectors to make acquisitions, and anecdotal evidence su...

We have come a long way from the days when Artificial Intelligence (AI) was primarily a research project in academia or in the corporate world, and the size of the market opportunity was unclear. Today, the transformative power of AI is well recognized and the dollar value generated by AI is estimated to be at least a $3 trillion dollars annually (through sales, cost savings, automation, etc.) according to McKinsey. While academia places its focus on general AI, it has been narrow AI, which is designed to handle specific tasks, that has gained adoption and risen as a highly investable spa...

In our May 26th FOX Virtual Member Exchange, we discussed the factors to consider when planning to open your Family Office. The below steps are critical to consider in addition to monitoring state and local regulations. In addition to working with your building management team, there are also guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as well as OSHA have in place. Factors to take into consideration when you can reopen include state and local guidelines as well as OSHA. If you do not own your building, you will also want to consult with your building management company. Other q...

As families of wealth and their Family Offices consider future success strategies, how ready are they to adapt? In this excerpt from our 2020 FOX Foresight publication, FOX Chief Operating Officer, Glen W. Johnson, talks with Dr. Jim Grubman about the approach he uses to help families and their Family Offices successfully navigate change. GLEN JOHNSON: How did the “Stages of Change” model in a family system come about? How did you adapt it to help families manage change?JIM GRUBMAN: The original model for the Stages of Change comes from research done in the 1970s and ‘80s around habit con...

COVID numbers have turned up – for the worse. Given the large spikes in new cases, hospitalizations and positive test rates across the United States, it is difficult to ignore the conflict between economic growth and crushing the pandemic. This tension between economic growth and efforts to stop the virus have been evident since the coronavirus started to hit the US in early March.Americans have viewed business closures as the driver of the recession and some policymakers and economists argue that they came at too great a cost relative to the benefits provided public health. The Chamber of Com...

In our May 12 FOX Member Exchange, we asked a live polling question “Describe the best meeting you’ve been to. What made it great.” The responses varied but what continually stood out, and was a recurring theme throughout the presentation, showing up in the chat box and in member questions. ENGAGEMENT. We know engagement was a struggle in the pre-COVID world. In today’s current experiment we are now trying to create relational connection, maintain forward momentum, get through a large agenda in 1/3 of the time, and make all of that ENGAGING. No small feat. Your family retreat, whil...

As we work to process the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others through the generations, we feel compelled to speak out. Discrimination is the greatest threat to a community built on belonging and acceptance. It cuts to the core of who we are and what we believe in.We want to reinforce our desire to create a safe and welcoming environment for all. We support and value diversity. We want to foster a society and a work environment free from discrimination and harassment that provides equal opportunities for all, and is a proponent for systemic change....

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With social distancing changing how work is done, a whole host of business continuity issues are affecting family offices. During a recent Member Exchange dialogue, members told us their family office culture, risk appetites, and technology were rapidly changing as a result. Human Capital ChallengesWhile work from home options are increasingly common with many employers, family offices —especially smaller ones —don't have as much experience with it and found it to be a big culture shift. Members cited holding regular check-ins using video conferencing tools and over-communicating helped w...

Want to know how to best support your IT teams amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis? Here are a few tips on how you can help make the best of this situation. Exercise PatienceThe most important thing you can do is have patience with your IT staff. Nearly all cloud services are struggling to keep up with the exponential growth of users flocking to their platforms and it’s important to realize that oftentimes there’s not much your staff can do to help a service scale. Practice being okay with some loss in call quality and downtime as these services scale. Check Status PagesYou can often ac...

Last year, The Olympic Manifesto, an 1892 manuscript by Pierre de Coubertin, estimated at $1,000,000, sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s New York for an astounding $8,806,500. This established a new world auction record for sports memorabilia, previously held by a Babe Ruth Yankees jersey that sold for $5.64 million earlier in the year. The auction marked the first time the 14-page manifesto had been publicly exhibited. Coubertin wrote the document as a speech outlining his wish to revive the ancient Olympic Games, leading to the organization of the first modern Olympics in Athens i...

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Today’s EnvironmentToday more than ever, with exponential change and global interdependency resulting in ever-greater complexity, epitomized by the Coronavirus pandemic, today’s world requires we bring out our best as leaders. Given the complexity of business, investments, cybersecurity, taxes, and family dynamics, leading in a Single Family Office (SFO) is a challenge for every leader in these turbulent times. Frame this for leaders in Single Family Offices (SFO) Working with SFO’s, it does not take long to hear the adage: if you have seen one family office, you’ve seen one family o...

Greg McCann is a certified leadership coach and is founder and principal of McCann & Associates.As a member of the rising gen living in today’s complex, rapidly changing world, one of the best ways to give yourself every chance to succeed as a leader, both personally and professionally, is to use coaching in two ways. First as a resource- getting yourself a coach along with developing at least one peer coaching relationship in your life. Secondly- see coaching as one style of your own overall leadership toolkit. Coaching will change your life while making you a more effective leader!I have...