What is a Family Office?

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What is a family office? And more specifically, what is Belgrade Family Office, your multi-family office in Serbia?

Managing the business of a high-wealth family demands a sophisticated approach. Many affluent families turn to family offices to streamline their financial affairs.

A family office is generally understood to mean a private office. In England, it is traditionally known as the “estate office”. The family office exists to provide a suite of services to the members of wealthy families. These offices are typically established by important families with complex requirements such as the management of lifestyle and luxury assets (villas, yachts etc), accounting and regulatory reporting, succession planning and philanthropic endeavors.

The family office has a deep and integral relationship with the family – its role is to maintain a ‘helicopter view’ of the family’s financial and personal situation, advising and acting accordingly. However, a family office is all about the long term view. Short term challenges will undoubtedly arise, but the continuity of the family wealth is paramount.

The ethos of a family office, thereforre, is to manage the wealth, assets and lifestyle of the family, ensuring that they are protected and grown. Family offices provide “concierge” solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of each family – for example, family office staff might be tasked with recommending and reserving top restaurants or clubs, facilitating the refueling of a yacht or private aircraft in a remote location, renting an apartment for a young family member studying in another country, drafting official letters, or arranging for someone to walk the family dogs while thery are travelling.

Besides taking care of lifestyle needs, in its trustee role, the family office needs to manage day-to-day financial affairs – paying credit card bills, placing stock market investments, paying household staff and personal assistants across multiple jurisdictions, and managing daily cash flow needs while the family is travelling.

The family business or estate office is also dedicated to managing the affairs of one or more family-owned businesses. If a family has multiple businesses, they may require someone to act as ‘head office’ – ensuring good corporate governance. The individuals working in a family business office must have strong experience in business management. They, or the family office as a corporate entity, often sit as a director on various family businesses.

Sometimes a family firm will have many complex structures in place to manage their financial and personal affairs. The administrative burden of managing those structures creates the need to have a full-time, dedicated family office team whose main purpose is to ensure that the international companies and trusts within the structure are being managed effectively.

What is a Multi-Family Office?

A multi-family office is where one office provides support to various families at the same time. This is the case with Belgrade Family Office here in Serbia.

Outsourcing family office requirements to a multi-family office has many advantages in terms of reducing fixed overhead, and obtaining access to top advisors where it would not be viable to hire them on retainer.

A multi-family office is an excellent solution for younger successful entrepreneurs who sense the need for a family office structure but are not yet ready to set up a full family office. The multi-family office concept embraces outsourcing and coworking, gaining access to a broad network of experienced professional consultants for a fraction of the cost of hiring such experts on a salary.

Here at Belgrade Family Office in Serbia, we offer a wide range of administrative and lifestyle services to a single individual or family, whilst we can of course establish and maintain a sophisticated and full family office in Serbia for those with more complex needs.

Bottom line: We can support and safeguard your family by acting as an outsourced family office or multi-family office. Alternatively we can work with established family offices or advisors to cover gaps in their in-house provision (for example if they do not have expertise in Serbia). Everything about running a family office is highly bespoke – so please feel free to schedule a no-obligation meeting with us to discuss your family’s needs.