What should a family preserve when moving oversight from a private bank to a multifamily office?
Preserve the family’s decision rules, records, relationships, privacy standards, and sense of control. A multifamily office can coordinate investments, reporting, administration, and outside advisers, while the family retains its values, authority, and long term goals. Document these before accounts and responsibilities move.
Preserve decision rights and values
Write down who decides what before the transition. Include authority over investment policy, distributions, borrowing, private investments, philanthropy, reporting, and the appointment or removal of advisers. Separate family decisions from delegated execution. Deloitte’s family office handbook recommends defining the rights and responsibilities of owners, management, and board members, with clear delegation and oversight. Deloitte, The Family Office Handbook
Keep the family’s purpose, risk tolerance, liquidity needs, and views on concentrated assets visible in the operating documents. The multifamily office should understand how the family defines success, including nonfinancial priorities. Those principles should guide service decisions and investment implementation.
Preserve the investment record and policy
Transfer complete records, including statements, cost information, entity documents, trust materials, performance reports, capital calls, agreements, and prior investment decisions. Ask the new office to reconcile the data before changing custody, managers, or allocations.
Create or refresh a written investment policy statement. It should describe objectives, liquidity needs, risk limits, allocation ranges, approval thresholds, and each adviser’s role. PwC identifies documented investment policies, clear committee authority, and independent monitoring of performance, risk, and fees as practical family office controls. PwC, Family Office Structure
Privacy policies regarding family matters should be set up from the beginning, and violations of these policies should be met with swift repercussions in order to set an example for other team members.
Preserve independent oversight and continuity
Agree on reporting before the handoff. Set a regular schedule for consolidated net worth, cash flow, performance, fees, exposure, and open decisions. Make sure the family can see underlying data and obtain records if the relationship ends.
Keep direct access to trusted legal, tax, and investment professionals who can review recommendations. Confirm how conflicts are disclosed, how outside managers are selected, and who reviews the multifamily office’s work. Build succession and contingency procedures for the family, key decision makers, and the office. Deloitte lists board oversight, transparent reporting, succession planning, and contingency planning as core governance practices. Deloitte, The Family Office Handbook
Preserve privacy and security standards. Define who may access information, how instructions are authenticated, and how sensitive documents are stored and shared. Review these controls with the family and the new office during the transition.