Both New York State and New York City have recently passed a series of laws that significantly increased the protections against sexual harassment in the workplace. These laws outline additional and specific requirements—including the adoption of anti-sexual harassment policies and training—that employers must comply with over the next year.
Family Office Best Practices
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The 5 Questions To Ask Your Controller
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As the office of the controller becomes ever more strategic—creating higher levels of financial visibility to help drive growth and profitability—the financial organization’s relationship to the controller role must evolve as well.
Natural Disasters: Understanding Exposures and Risks
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Over the past several years, the world has experienced an increase in the number of devastating natural disasters, yet according to FEMA more than 60% of Americans lack a household emergency plan. In this webinar, Marsh Private Client Services and Guy Carpenter examined natural disasters, including earthquake, flood, storm surge, wildfire, and windstorm, and their potential risks. They shared information to help individuals, families, family offices, and their advisors understand their exposures and the resources available to help mitigate and manage these risks.
If you think you may need a family office to manage your family’s wealth or you want to take your family office to the next level, this webinar will help you understand the role and functions of a family office and what it takes to start and maintain one.In this session, you will learn about the concepts FOX has garnered working with families around the world and powerful stories of successes and failures.The webinar focused on services offered by family offices. Highlights include:
Life Insurance Audits: What You Need to Know
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Life insurance is part of virtually all family and family office environments. It is utilized for short- and long-term planning, financial security for spouses, estate taxes and family business buy/sell planning. Often not well understood, life insurance can be easily relegated to the “back burner” – with potentially disastrous results. Auditing these assets can highlight unknown, time-sensitive risks, and increase financial leverage opportunities.The learning objectives include:
Becoming a Data-Driven Finance Leader
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From big data and network effects to the subscription economy and cloud computing, modern finance is undergoing its most fundamental transformation ever. Today, it takes a data-driven finance leader – someone who understands and embraces the promise and power of technology – to navigate this exciting, uncertain future.We discussed:
What can I do to raise productive, responsible, generous and prepared inheritors or owners? How do I get the rising generation to get involved and engaged in learning so they are ready for their future roles and responsibilities? How do we create programs and a curriculum that everyone will find valuable taking into consideration their different ages, interests and aptitudes? While there is not a silver bullet solution or a guarantee of success, this session will provide insights and examples to help parents, family office professionals, and wealth advisors address these common questions.
The 2017 Tax Act presents planning opportunities around the choice of entity. Existing clients with pass through entities like S-Corporations and LLCs need to consider if maintaining this status is prudent given the changes in the tax law. In the past C-Corporations considered elections to become pass through entities to avoid two tiers of tax. What is best for a particular client situation will challenge past convention on choice of entity as optimization is dependent on facts and circumstances.
Families often ask what the best technology platform for a family office is – making the assumption that there are just one or two types of technology solutions. However, most family offices require a combination of accounting, investment and reporting tools, as well as various supporting tools. The specific tools vary based on the types of investments, activities performed within the office and by service providers, and the needs and desires of the family and its staff.
While most indicators predict a healthy economy in the near future, the inevitable downturn lurks ominously on the horizon. In addition, tension with Russia and China, as well as the threat of renewed violence in the Middle East creates warranted anxiety among investors. Certainly the landscape of risks investors and family offices face continues to evolve and some risks may play out slowly over years or decades, but even those discussed daily in the media could play out in different ways.