Deciding whether to establish a family office is often one of the most important choices wealthy families make. A wide range of factors shape this decision. In this article, we examine three of them by comparing four wealthy families and their approaches to managing their fortunes.
María Asunción Aramburuzabala formed family office Tresalia Capital after her father Pablo – executive vice president of Grupo Modelo, the brewer of Corona beer that his own father Felix founded after the Mexican Revolution – died unexpectedly of cancer in 1995 at age 63 with no finalized succession plan. Today she is worth an estimated $8.2 billion, making her Mexico’s wealthiest woman and Latin America’s second after Chilean mining magnate Iris Fontbana. Her story holds three valuable lessons for today’s family office builders.
Today’s family offices face two challenges that seem to work against each other: keeping talented staff and controlling costs. Recent industry research shows this phenomenon to be widespread. Simply paying higher salaries is not the answer. The way forward is to invest in modern technology that transforms how family offices operate.
For centuries, ultra-wealthy families have been relying on dedicated teams to manage their financial affairs. These teams’ methods, operational scopes, and sophistication have evolved significantly in response to economic shifts, technological advances, and evolving global opportunities. By examining these transitions, we uncover valuable lessons for wealth owners building family offices in the modern era.
According to the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), in 2024 there were more than $1 trillion in assets under management allocated towards achieving social and environmental benefits alongside financial returns. What are the most popular forms of these assets and how do family offices approach them? This article breaks down the key information.
Managing a family’s wealth has never been more challenging. Portfolio complexity is rising along with expectations for transparency, digital access, and compliance readiness. For family office professionals, traditional approaches involving periodic meetings to review spreadsheets and documentation are no longer sufficient. Fortunately, financial technology (fintech) companies can help advisors meet the expectations wealth owners have in the digital age. In this article, we shine a light on how the fintech we know best – ours – is doing just that.
Ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs) often prefer to keep a low profile. Yet in today’s digital era, discretion alone no longer suffices. Cybercriminals now target family offices—the specialized entities managing the wealth and affairs of the world’s wealthiest families.
Cyberattacks on financial institutions are hardly rare these days, yet few entities shoulder as much risk as family offices tasked with safeguarding ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) clients. IBM Security’s “Cost of a Data Breach” report places the global average expense of a breach at $4.45 million, noting that incursions into financial services typically run almost 10 percent higher than those in other sectors.
To boost the efficiency of the Swiss wealth management business and to strengthen Switzerland as a financial and innovation center are two main goals of the OpenWealth Association. The community of banks, wealth, and wealth managers was established in 2021 in Zurich to develop, define, maintain, and operationalize the Open API standard for the wealth management community.
If you’re using Excel spreadsheets for wealth management, you may have wondered about the value of a wealth management platform, and at what point it makes sense to investigate the options.
As a wealth manager, do your clients take your advice entirely at face value? If not, they probably have good reasons. After all, they most likely became wealthy by thinking analytically. You should not expect them to stop that analysis just because you are providing the answers. Fortunately, their difficult questions can hold immense value for both you and them. A sophisticated digital wealth platform can help you extract and unlock that value.
In today’s increasingly digitalised financial landscape, all forward-thinking wealth professionals face a shared set of challenges in consolidating, analysing, and visualising data as they monitor investments. For family officers in particular, these challenges involve three specific challenges. Here we suggest how you can successfully address them.
To keep up with constantly shifting traditional markets like real estate and equities as well as emerging asset classes like NFTs and cryptocurrencies, many family offices have recognised the importance of investing in their people’s targeted education. In this article, we list some of the best business school offerings designed to help family office executives skill up.
Projections of the value of the personal assets set to change hands during the so-called Great Wealth Transfer have risen from US $129 trillion from $72 trillion. More significantly, or perhaps alarmingly, are expectations that up to 88% of heirs to this wealth will fire or replace their parents’ financial advisors. How can you position yourself to keep serving the next generation of their clients? Read on for our top three recommendations.
Return on investment (ROI) is the profit earned on an investment divided by the cost of that investment. Although this calculation fails to directly account for the time value of money – an important consideration as some investments take longer to return profits than others – it offers a quick, useful way to estimate the future success of a given project. How can you apply this concept when evaluating potential investments into new technology? What factors should you bear in mind? Here we outline our suggestions.
As digitalisation reshapes the global economy, a trend of so-called crypto philanthropy has emerged. Involving cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, this innovative concept provides a borderless and bureaucracy-free alternative to traditional philanthropy and is poised to take on a powerful role in charitable giving.
For family offices, going paperless not only streamlines operations but also supports a more sustainable and efficient business model. Read on for our top tips on how your family office can digitalise to improve the way you manage finances and boost overall productivity.
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Deciding whether to establish a family office is often one of the most important choices wealthy families make. A wide range of factors shape this decision. In this article, we examine three of them by comparing four wealthy families and their approaches to managing their fortunes.
María Asunción Aramburuzabala formed family office Tresalia Capital after her father Pablo – executive vice president of Grupo Modelo, the brewer of Corona beer that his own father Felix founded after the Mexican Revolution – died unexpectedly of cancer in 1995 at age 63 with no finalized succession plan. Today she is worth an estimated $8.2 billion, making her Mexico’s wealthiest woman and Latin America’s second after Chilean mining magnate Iris Fontbana. Her story holds three valuable lessons for today’s family office builders.
Today’s family offices face two challenges that seem to work against each other: keeping talented staff and controlling costs. Recent industry research shows this phenomenon to be widespread. Simply paying higher salaries is not the answer. The way forward is to invest in modern technology that transforms how family offices operate.
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María Asunción Aramburuzabala formed family office Tresalia Capital after her father Pablo – executive vice president of Grupo Modelo, the brewer of Corona beer that his own father Felix founded after the Mexican Revolution – died unexpectedly of cancer in 1995 at age 63 with no finalized succession plan. Today she is worth an estimated $8.2 billion, making her Mexico’s wealthiest woman and Latin America’s second after Chilean mining magnate Iris Fontbana. Her story holds three valuable lessons for today’s family office builders.
