Evolving a family office beyond its original mission statement of investment management and growth into proactive succession planning and wealth preservation provides long-term rewards as this insightful article highlights. 

Multi-generational and cross-border families face a variety of pressures and stress factors that run the serious risk of causing family assets and businesses to dissipate. Gifts to children lost to their divorcing spouse, trusts exposed inadvertently to foreign taxes due to a family member's relocation abroad or operating companies facing fragmentation or significant devaluation due to warring family branches with shareholdings. 

Family offices can play a critical role in helping families avoid or navigate through these tricky situations by being a part of essential family governance planning. A recent governance exercise I worked on for an Indonesian family is a good example of this. Part of it involved working with their Singapore family office to map out when a Next Generation family member resident in the UK was due to become UK deemed domiciled for UK tax purposes, and what restructuring needed to be done beforehand to minimise the impact this would have on the family wealth. 

Another, fundamental part involved really getting to know the family and understanding their psychologies and dynamics. Only by doing this could we develop a truly bespoke and meaningful family governance framework and business transition plan from G1 to G2 for the family. Working closely with their family office who recognised the importance of our psychological approach to family governance planning and respected the process was invaluable to us as advisers but ultimately for the family.