Who Owns the Whole Picture?
A couple of weeks ago I posted about the family office gap below $100 million. Several interesting conversations came out of it, and it confirmed my thesis. The gap is real and growing.
I keep thinking about one thing: Who owns the whole picture? And who is responsible for keeping it current?
Most high-net-worth families already have plenty of advisors. An investment manager sees one set of assets. The CPA sees the tax returns. The estate attorney sees the trusts and legal structures. The banker sees the debt.
Each plays an important role. But who understands the entire field, coordinates the different players and controls who can see what?
Advisors seeing only a slice isn’t necessarily a problem. Often, it’s intentional. A family may not want any single advisor to see or control everything. This is where many wealth-management platforms get the architecture backward. The advisor owns the system and offers it to the family as part of the relationship. But what happens when the family changes advisors, uses several advisors or wants each person limited to a specific piece of the picture?
I believe the underlying infrastructure should belong to the family:
- It survives changing advisors and staff
- It lets the family selectively grant access
- It preserves institutional knowledge
- It creates continuity across generations
But here’s the thing. Family-owned doesn’t always have to mean family-operated. I’ve seen many Gen 1, self-made principals play this role themselves and for good reason. But when they reach the point of making that first hire, it doesn’t have to mean building a full staff or even hiring a full-time person. I talk to more and more fractional CFO / COO / controller or other family-side operators who play quarterback: gathering information, coordinating the specialists and keeping the complete picture current. (This keeping things current is a big one that takes a big load off the principal.)
The important thing is that a quarterback can change without the family losing the field, the playbook or its history.
So whether it’s principal-run, fractional-operator-run, or moving towards a full staff, the most important piece is that the family must own the infrastructure for continuity and control.