Family Office - marc bauen

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Swiss Banking
Clients It is difficult to answer the question as to what level of overall
wealth it makes sense to take advantage of a family office. The prevailing
view is wealth of at least CHF 50 to 200 million justifies the hiring
of multiple persons and the associated costs or compensation for the optimized
services. As a consequence, very wealthy persons, i.e. in modern
banking jargon «Ultra High Net Worth Individuals» (UHNW) are the only
ones for whom the services of a family office would come into question.
Nevertheless, smaller estates may qualify for the services of a multi­family
office, since in practice only individual services are often in demand.
There are a lot of families in Western Europe with wealth in excess of
CHF 100 million, of which only a few retain the services of their own family
office. Although growing, a number of families forgo the opportunity and
continue to find other solutions to cover their own needs.
Providers The number of family offices or providers of family office
services has enjoyed strong growth over the past 20 years due to a massive
increase in the number of very wealthy private parties. In Switzerland,
the following provide specific family office services:
• UBS 9 and Credit Suisse as well as large private banks (especially the
family office of the Geneva private bank Pictet & Cie) or other financial
and asset management institutions active in private banking;
• Law offices or offices associated with companies;
• Independent consultant companies focusing on wealthy private
customers 10 ;
• Fiduciary companies;
• Specifically, companies newly established as family offices (often the
result of a merger among multiple legal and tax specialists as well as
asset management) 11 ;
• Individuals (often specialists in legal and tax advisory services as well
as asset management).
The independence of the family office is decisive for rendering
services. The office must be independent with regard to both advice as
well as products (especially financial products). This is the only way to
ensure quality and thus success. It is for this reason that family offices
at banks must be designed to be independent and cannot be pressured
to recommend or sell only or mostly a bank’s own products and services.
Family offices at purely private banks that do not sell any (or very few
products) in particular enjoy a high level of credibility.