Lan Shaw is the founder and principal of Vision Private Wealth, a leading multi-family office serving high-net-worth individuals and families, and successful business owners.
Russ Alan Prince: Please describe Vision Private Wealth.
Lan Shaw: High-net-worth individuals and families are often poorly served. Their complex financial situations and less-than-optimal support teams can lead to missed opportunities and costly mistakes.
Our boutique multi-family office is dedicated to optimizing wealth, life and legacy, so our high-net-worth clients can leverage more of their opportunities and avoid potential pitfalls. As a high-functioning family office, we bring integration to traditional wealth management silos. For example, by combining sophisticated wealth planning with investment management, our goal is to significantly increase the after-tax returns on our clients’ portfolios.
We provide comprehensive wealth planning, helping successful individuals and families mitigate taxes, plan for tax-efficient successions and transfer family wealth in accordance with their vision. We also work with our clients to protect them from unjust lawsuits and ensure their family wealth stays intact regardless of marital or other relationship developments. We provide cross-border planning for non-US citizens and those with dual citizenship.
Our investment management services focus on meaningfully growing our clients’ wealth while mitigating their burden, eliminating unnecessary fees and providing access to selective offerings. In addition, under the umbrella of personal and family support, we’ll work seamlessly with them to provide governance, lifestyle coaching and educational services.
Optimizing wealth, life and legacy requires a deep, enduring relationship built on trust, ongoing dialogue and a continuous process focused on maximization to meet our clients’ evolving goals, needs and values. We regularly coordinate a team of specialists to provide superior results, including helping our clients navigate complex changes in the world around them.
Prince: What kind of clients do you typically work with?
Shaw: We work with high-net-worth families and business owners who value seamless synergy. For example, following the loss of both parents, a client and siblings inherited $100 million in investments and real estate assets with complicated arrangements. With a lack of experience managing such wealth, further complicated by a lack of trust among the siblings, the client needed help understanding the complexity of the financial situation and navigating the dynamics of multiple business partners and family members. Our ongoing relationship with this client ensures that they clearly understand their evolving financial situation and can make confident, informed decisions that bring a grand vision to life while also honoring the family’s legacy.
Another example of the type of clients we work with is two entrepreneurs in a high-income tax bracket who wanted to strategically reduce their income taxes. We devised tax mitigation strategies that significantly reduced their income taxes while allowing them to beef up their retirement contributions, keep pace with inflation and grow income tax-free. These assets reside outside of their estate and are protected from creditors. This money can also be transferred to the next generation without estate taxes.
For another client, we helped her sell her firm of highly skilled professionals at a prime sale price while successfully retaining the current management team and staff of 25 employees. We guided the client in selecting a broker, preparing the business for sale and ensuring the firm’s optimal valuation. We also advised the client through the buyer qualification and selection process during the sale, ensuring a tax-efficient sale that set her up for the kind of retirement she desired.
Prince: What is the future of the family office approach?
Shaw: As the amount of wealth being created increases and complexity continues to grow, traditional financial management approaches will become even more fractured and unable to serve high-net-worth clients. The synergistic, client-centric approach of family office advisories will be highly in demand and more accessible to a wider range of clients because of five developments.
One development is the ability of leading professionals to develop a deep understanding of their high-net-worth clients so as to provide customized solutions. Family offices will continue to provide highly tailored solutions based on a comprehensive knowledge of the family’s financial assets, focusing on the family’s vision, values and desires for the future. They may expand existing service areas, including philanthropy coordination, concierge medicine, succession planning and family governance, providing truly comprehensive wealth management solutions.
Another development is technological integration. As technology reshapes the financial advisory landscape, the family office approach will become more accessible to clients with significantly less than $250 million in net worth. Family offices will leverage technology to improve service delivery, risk management, and decision-making more efficiently and cost-effectively.
A third development is sustainable and impact investing. As societal awareness of global challenges increases, there’s a growing demand for investment strategies that optimize financial outcomes and create positive societal and environmental impacts. As a family office, we’re well-positioned to lead in this space as we align our clients’ substantial resources with their values and long-term vision.
The fourth development is the ability to conduct ongoing evaluations of client situations and solutions to ensure optimal results. As the complexity of social, economic and political situations increases, an optimal strategy will require an ongoing evaluation of the client’s situation to keep them on the best path. We help our clients understand the impact the ever-changing environment can have on their situations while devising updated strategies that consider these changes.
The fifth development is secession planning. As more people reach retirement age and private equity continues to invest in valuable businesses, focus on and demand for succession planning will increase. As a family office, we’ll continue to play a critical role in helping clients build businesses that bring maximum exit value whenever they sell. We also help our clients envision their post-sale life chapter so they feel ready to move forward. At that point, if that applies, we guide them in preparing for the sale, including tax-mitigation strategies and readying their family members. Finally, we help them complete the sale in a way that ensures a successful and smooth transition that ushers in their ideal future.
Overall, the future of the private wealth industry will likely be a technologically advanced, highly collaborative field that provides personalized, holistic wealth management solutions, focusing not only on financial returns but also on the wider impact of investments. At Vision Private Wealth, we’ll continue to be integral in helping our clients achieve their desired outcomes.
Lan J. Shaw (CA Insurance Lic #09F4440) is a registered representative and investment advisor representative with/and offers securities and advisory services through Commonwealth Financial Network, Member Finra/SIPC, a registered investment advisor. Vision Private Wealth, 2159 Central Avenue Alameda, CA 94501 | P 510.358.8668
Russ Alan Prince is the executive director of Private Wealth magazine and chief content officer for High-Net-Worth Genius. He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs and select professionals.
