Family offices

A family office is a private business set up by a family of significant wealth to manage its financial, administrative and personal affairs.

A typical family office provides a range of services including family financial planning and literacy, investment management, estate and tax planning, philanthropic initiatives, concierge services and family governance.

You might benefit from a family office if you hold diverse assets such as operating businesses, real estate and private equity, and want to streamline decision-making across investments, philanthropy and estate matters.

If you wish to safeguard your family’s future wealth or have plans for multi-generational wealth, then a family office could serve as a strategic hub for exploring and executing ideas that align with your family’s values, vision and lifestyle.

You may wish to consider starting a family office when your wealth becomes complex – typically after a business sale, inheritance or major liquidity event – and you desire centralized management of investments along with tax, estate, and legacy planning. 

Or, if you’re planning for future generations, seeking more privacy and control or juggling multiple advisors, then it might be the right time to consider a family office as it may help you coordinate key decisions and align long-term goals.  You can start small and scale the structure as your needs evolve.  

A family office aims to foster cohesion and enhance family governance by creating clear structures for wealth management, succession planning and decision-making. It promotes transparency within the family and aligns values across generations – helping to reduce conflict. 

By centralizing financial, legal and philanthropic affairs, it can help families make unified, informed decisions, preserving harmony and long-term legacy.

A family office can support inheritance and succession planning by facilitating family governance structures, educating heirs and coordinating communication to minimise conflict. It can design customised estate plans and manage legal and tax strategies to ensure efficient wealth transfer. 

To help foster unity, it can create a family charter – a written document reflecting the family’s culture, vision and decision-making framework. Furthermore, many family offices provide tailored educational support to prepare the next generation for the responsibilities of managing family wealth.

Each family office is unique and tailored to the needs of the family it serves. Some very large family offices employ dozens of specialised individuals to cover a variety of needs in-house, while others operate a more streamlined structure and outsource a number of more complex activities to banks, accountants and asset managers.

Family office structures also vary substantially, and can involve multiple companies, trusts and foundations across multiple jurisdictions to optimize efficiency and flexibility according to family needs.

As each family office is unique to the family it is set up to serve, there is no fixed process you should follow.

However a helpful starting point is to fully understand as a family your goals and objectives for the management and transfer of family wealth, which you may keep informally or via a written family constitution. Many advisors can assist you with this process, and the next steps of formally setting up entities in the right jurisdictions to manage your family wealth.

Deutsche Bank has connections to a variety of top external advisors with whom we can connect you, and our Family Office experts would be delighted to share their thoughts informally with you as you begin the process.