High-performing single-family offices are often considered “smart money.” They are entities established and designed to serve the financial and lifestyle need of individual super-rich families (net worth = US $500 million or more). Being able to leverage enormous fortunes and deliver exceptional results for super-rich families is primarily due to the talent engaged by high-performing single-family offices.
“For some time, high-performing single-family offices and ultra-wealthy families have been the near-exclusive users of an array of sophisticate wealth management strategies and products,” explains Anthony Glomski, President and Founder of AG Asset Advisory Family Office and author of Liquidity and You: A Personal Guide for Tech and Business Entrepreneurs Approaching an Exit. “The benefits of these elite wealth management solutions are very significant and, in some cases, have further distanced them from those without analogous wealth and preferential access.”
Some examples of these elite wealth management solutions include:
- Mitigating corporate and therefore personal taxes by capitalizing on different jurisdictions
- Decreasing taxes by benefitting from government-sanctioned tax-mitigating investments
- Eliminating ALL taxes on the growth of their investment portfolios
- Seriously lowering the amount of income taxes owed while building up a substantial pool of money for later use
- Hedging physical assets
- Creating a pool of money that is not taxed as it grows with each generation
- Ensuring their monies are protected by leveraging a series of offshore jurisdictions
As Peter Sasaki, Managing Member, SDS Family Office explains, “The ability of high-performing single-family offices to hire the best wealth planning specialists, for instance, is core to their ability to nimbly navigate the tax code and regulatory environment in ways previously unavailable to most affluent families. For example, hiring the best investment advisors can give them a meaningful edge when it comes to the growth of their portfolios.”
But that has changed. According to PJ DiNuzzo, Founder and President of DiNuzzo Middle-Market Family Office and author of The DiNuzzo Middle-Market Family Office”™ Breakthrough: Creating Strategic Tax, Risk Cash-Flow and Lifestyle Options for Successful Privately-Held Business Owners and Affluent Families. “The curtain is being pulled back providing opportunities for successful families who are not nearly as affluent as the super-rich to also benefit from these same or variations of these elite wealth management solutions.” More and more exceptional and ingenious professionals are finding ways to make the benefits of elite wealth management available to a much broader and less wealthy audience.
Moreover, with the growing multi-family office trend, the brilliance of the best financial and legal authorities is now increasingly available to a much wider array of successful individuals and families. Simply put, you no longer have to be super-rich to get the advantages of a high-performing single-family office. For the most part, a high-performing multi-family office will deliver comparable results.
Today, by engaging a high-performing multi-family office, you can potentially significantly increase and protect your personal wealth. For example, many successful individuals and families can employ elite wealth management solutions to help them to:
- Better manage their personal and corporate risks
- Supercharge investment returns
- Eliminate capital gains taxes on the sale of appreciated assets such as business equity and real estate
- Split up the business ownership among feuding partners without having any tax liabilities
- Protect hard-earned wealth from unfounded or frivolous litigation as well as future ex-spouses
According to Homer Smith, Managing Founder of Konvergent Wealth Partners, and co-author of Optimizing the Financial Lives of Clients: Harness the Power of an Accounting Firm’s Elite Wealth Management Practice, “Successful entrepreneurs, for example, have financial and legal concerns that are unique to them, their businesses, and their family. It’s quite possible that some of these issues could be addressed by employing elite wealth management solutions regularly used by the super-rich.” The complication is that only truly high-end professionals such as those in high-performing multi-family offices know how to use elite wealth management solutions in ways that will likely address any successful individual’s or family’s particular circumstances.
“Some elite wealth management solutions are appropriate only for the super-rich. For example, an asset protection strategy referred to as ‘floating islands,’ is only viable if you have Croesus amounts of money,” says Vince Annable, CEO and Founder of VFO Advisory Group and author of The Household Endowment Model: Wealth Planning for Affluent Families. “However, for those who are considerably less wealthy, there are quite a number of highly effective ways to insulate personal wealth from unfounded or frivolous lawsuits. And, all these possibilities are available through a high-performing multi-family office.”
In conclusion, although many elite wealth management solutions are common practice in the world of high-performing single-family offices and the super-rich, successful individuals and families can now use many of them and get the same type of results by relying on high-performing multi-family offices.
RUSS ALAN PRINCE is the Executive Director of Private Wealth magazine (pw-mag.com) and Chief Content Officer for High-Net-Worth Genius (hnwgenius.com). He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs, and select professionals.
