Family Office Best Practices

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Six Signs of Ineffective Family Office Reporting
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Based on a FOX Research, the average family office spends about 32 percent of its time on financial administration and reporting. That’s almost 17 weeks a year spent on collecting, verifying, analyzing, and consolidating financial information. For some family offices, these jobs took up as much as 75 percent of their time, which left them with little time to contribute to the true strategic objectives of a family office. The good news is that there is a better way, but first it's important to examine where family offices are going wrong.

Ten Most Common Mistakes of Family Office Investors
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Families are often overwhelmed by the complexity and sense of burden that comes with managing all the component parts of wealth across generations. More concerning, though, is the lost opportunities and the loss of capital that results from not getting it right. But owning and managing significant wealth does not have to be difficult, and learning from the ten most common mistakes that a family office investor makes can help the process become easier.

Internal Controls: Assessing Risks and Implementing Solutions
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Family office activities are complex, and families can unintentionally put themselves at risk if they don’t proactively identify and address the potential impact of external factors. One solution: conduct a full diagnostic risk assessment and review of your internal controls to ensure that potential problems have been identified and proper mitigation strategies have been implemented.

Top 10 Security Risks to Family Offices and Family Business and Best Practices for Mitigation
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Family offices and family-operated companies face a variety of security risks, including: cyber, physical, reputational, and financial. In many cases, their interconnectedness to family residences complicates matters further. David London of The Chertoff Group and FOX senior technology consultant Steven Draper will explain how to improve a family’s risk profile by identifying specific risks and implementing proven best practices for mitigating them.

Building a Family Office With Outcomes In Mind
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A common question that a family often asks prior to building a family office is “What is a family office anyway and does my family actually need one?” The answer depends on the family’s goals, as well as understanding the four different types of family offices that are commonly used: (1) single family office, (2) family business office, (3) family virtual office, and (4) multi-family office.

Innovations in Financial Services: A Look at the Future
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Consistent with the World Economic Forum’s mission of applying a multi-stakeholder approach to address issues of global impact, The Future of Financial Services Report completed in June 2015 provides insight into how disruptive innovations are reshaping the way financial services are structured, provisioned and consumed. Michael Drexler and Jesse McWaters will share insight into the transformative potential of new entrants and innovations on business models in financial services.

Technological Innovation in the Family Office: Where are the Opportunities?
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Researchers have determined a link between technology innovation and economic prosperity as well as a unique relationship between the usage of internet-based technologies, different types of innovation, and performance at the firm level. As internet-based technologies continue to be an enabler of innovation, it is critical that families, family offices, and the advisory firms serving them stay abreast of the types and caliber of technological innovation that is available.

Aligning Culture: Making Culture Personal
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As research continues to validate the need for cultural alignment within families as well as between families and the advisors who serve them, there is continued need for effective assessments that measure culture and clear approaches to manage sustainable change.

Cybersecurity is Like a Sponge: 5 Ways to Contain Your Data
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It’s tempting to imagine the computer systems as airtight vaults, impenetrable and immune to cyberattacks. But this would be a risky move. In reality, IT infrastructure is more like a porous sponge with gaping holes where data can leak when things don’t go according to plan: a staff member might lose a laptop, a system might experience a configuration error, or sensitive information might accidentally be published online.