发布时间：2022-08-29
传承宝典｜单一家族办公室与多家族办公室（上）
导语
高净值家族在被大量的咨询和服务推荐围追堵截。私人银行家、律师、信托公司、投资经理、会计师、保险公司、艺术顾问和安全顾问为获得受家族信任的顾问角色而竞相争夺。即使是对于财富管理世界里最有把握的领航者而言，那些声称“站在他们一边”并提供“一致利益”的机构如此泛滥，也会让人感到困惑。
许多家族希望通过家族办公室的概念来实现利益调整。但对于家族而言，他们需要什么样的家族办公室呢？
关键是确定正确和切实可行的做法，以满足家族的需求。这通常包括对内外部责任如何分配进行评估。本文旨在帮助所服务的家族审视这一问题，并将重点讨论单一家族办公室和多家族办公室的比较优势。
本文内容由雷梭勒家族办公室根据Stonehage Fleming文章编译整理，版权归原作者所有。
有一些家族的主要需求是投资管理，而另一些家族则需要多样化的专业和行政服务，以满足国际家族复杂的规划需求，他们通过复杂的信托结构拥有广泛的商业利益、财产和休闲资产。
家族应该从头开始建立自己的业务，还是利用他人搭建的专业知识和基础设施？
虽然个人偏好发挥着作用，但这种选择最好根据家族的特殊需求和情况决定。
我们可以认为，家族的需求越简单，使用多家族办公室的理由就越充分。事实上，许多自称是家族办公室的机构，本质上是专注于富裕家庭需求的资产管理公司。相反，家族的需求越复杂，就越难找到合适的外部支持。
关键是确定正确和切实可行的做法，以满足家族的需求。这通常包括对内外部责任如何分配进行评估。本文旨在帮助所服务的家族审视这一问题，并将重点讨论单一家族办公室和多家族办公室的比较优势。
家族办公室的功能
“家族办公室”这面旗帜往往被各种机构拿来悬挂。在这里，我们将家族办公室定义为一个帮助家族确定并实现其战略目标的多领域平台。
一个真正的家族办公室在确定采用何种“家族方式”处理广泛事务方面发挥着关键作用，除其他因素外，这些事务尤其包含以下方面：
最后一项显然是非常重要的。然而需要注意的是，它不是唯一的项目，“家族办公室”一词不应该被视为“家族投资办公室”的同义词。
单一家族办公室
每个家族在战略和技术上都有不同的要求。关于哪种方法正确，没有硬性规定。然而，单一家族办公室的模式通常有几个明显的优势。
私密性
有明确的证据表明，许多家族选择设立单一家族办公室，是为了提高他们可能享有的私密度。
将更多的工作交由一支小型的、精心挑选的团队承担，有关家族的信息会较少被传播。理论上，相关信息可以得到严格的管理，对数据的访问也会受到监控。
从表面上看，这些都是合理的观点。然而，单一家族办公室的运营团队规模较小，这可能会在隐私方面造成问题。这种情况下，更需要使用IT供应商等外部机构。对外部支持团队进行适当的审查可能很困难，而在需要外部支持的情况下，也不可能限制其访问权限。
另外，将大量的信息和责任集中在少数几个人身上，当关系变糟时也会产生问题。较大的组织能够建立监督机制和“信息防火墙”，以确保信息在需要了解的基础上进行管理，而不论信息访问者的资历。
小型单一家族办公室在物理和电子安全性方面也更难得到保证。
控制权
如果家族拥有自己的单一家族办公室，则不必担心它将被出售或与其他组织合并。该家族是其家族办公室命运的唯一主人。
所有权和控制权有时会出现新的问题。需要对每个相关司法管辖区的监管和税务问题，以及每个司法管辖区的居民持有控制权的后果审慎考虑。
专一
单一家族办公室是一种专一资源，专门为一个家族服务。相关人员不会收到其他客户的竞争性要求。这种情况下，家族办公室团队对该家族事务的理解应该是最为独到的。
然而存在一个重大的不足。通常情况下，单一家族办公室团队会被认为与家族内的某个成员或子集团有关联。他们可能是“爸爸的人”。在有压力的情况下，这种关联会给人一种党派的感觉。这反过来又意味着单一家族办公室团队无法处理棘手的传承问题或其他纠纷。专业机构能够部署不同的人员，更好地发现并管理这些冲突，因为他们具备且能够提供其固有的独立性。
定制
单一家族办公室可以灵活设计，以贴切满足所服务的家族的需求。合适的专业资源可以从外部获取。除了为客户家庭服务外，该组织没有任何商业压力。
然而，需求会发生变化，与规模更大、资源更丰富的机构相比，规模较小的机构可能无法满足这些需求。
利益协调一致
理论上，家族可以相信，他们自己的单一家庭办公室工作人员的动机仅仅是为家族提供最好的服务。毕竟，他们不是在销售任何产品。
然而应该非常小心，以确保雇员与雇主的目标没有分歧。即使在单一家族办公室中，负责投资工作的员工也会感到，他们就跟在更大范围的市场中的同行一样，为了追业绩而被迫承担不适当的风险，尤其是当他们依靠这么做来获得薪酬时。
这一问题延伸到了其他多个领域。单一家族办公室团队可能会本能地在专业知识甚至个人利益方面向自己的舒适区漂移，尤其是当他们被鼓励将外部联系和费用水平保持在最低时。例如，他们可能不愿意就某一具体问题与律师接触，而宁愿完全回避这一问题，或在没有得到建议的情况下继续。一家多领域的多家族办公室则有能力保持其自身具备一系列专业知识，在日常工作中提供快速且具有成本效益的建议。
英文原文
Single and Multi Family Offices I
A CASE OF COMPETITION OR CONCORD?
Wealthy families are bombarded with offers of advice and service. Private bankers, lawyers, trustees, investment managers, accountants, insurers, art consultants and security advisers scrabble over one another for the role of trusted adviser to the family. To even the most assured navigator of the wealth management world, the profusion of organisations purporting to ‘be on their side’ and offering an ‘alignment of interests’ can be bewildering.
Many families look to the idea of a Family Office for this alignment of interest.
But what sort of Family Office is required?
For some families the principal need is the management of investments.
Others require a diverse range of professional and administrative services to meet the complex planning needs of international families, with extensive business interests, property and leisure assets, owned through complex fiduciary structures.
Should families build their own operations from scratch or use the expertise and infrastructure developed by others?
Whilst personal preferences play their part, this choice is best determined by the particular needs and circumstances of the family.It can be reasonably argued that the simpler the needs of the family, the stronger the case for using a Multi Family Office. Indeed, many organisations describing themselves as Family Offices are essentially asset managers focused on the needs of wealthy families. By contrast, the more complex the needs of the family, the more difficult it is for families to find the right external support.
The central task is to identify the right practical arrangements to meet a family’s needs. This will often include an assessment of the degree to which responsibilities are allocated internally and externally. This paper seeks to assist families in this deliberation and will focus on the comparative merits of the Single Family Office and the Multi Family Office.
FUNCTIONS OF A FAMILY OFFICE
‘Family Office’ is a flag flown by a wide range of organisations. It is taken here to describe a multi-disciplinary platform that enables families to identify and achieve their strategic goals.
A true Family Office will play a key role in determining the ‘family approach’ to a wide range of affairs, including inter alia:
The last item is obviously extremely important. Critically however, it is not the only item and the term ‘Family Office’ should not be taken as synonymous with ‘Family Investment Office’.
THE SINGLE FAMILY OFFICE
The strategic and technical requirements of each family are different. There are no rigid rules as to the right approach. However, several perceived advantages are often associated with the Single Family Office model.
Privacy
There is clear evidence that many of those choosing to set up a Single Family Office do so in order to increase the level of privacy that they might enjoy.
More work is undertaken by a small, hand-picked group and less information about the family is circulated. Theoretically, data can be tightly managed and access to it monitored.
On the face of it, these are fair points. However, the fact that Single Family Offices have smaller operational teams can cause problems in respect of privacy. There is a greater need for the use of external agencies such as IT providers. It can be tough to properly vet the support teams and impossible in the event of need for external support to restrict access.
The concentration of a great deal of information and responsibility with a few people can also be problematic if the relationship sours. Larger organisations are able to put in place oversight mechanisms and ‘Chinese walls’ to ensure that information is managed on a need to know basis, regardless of seniority.
The physical and electronic security of smaller Single Family Offices can also be harder to protect.
Control
A family with its own Single Family Office need not fear that it will be sold or merged with another organisation. The family is sole master of its destiny.
Ownership and control can occasionally present new issues. Great care needs to be applied to the regulatory and tax issues that pertain in each relevant jurisdiction and the consequences of control being held by residents of each jurisdiction.
Dedication
A Single Family Office is a dedicated resource, devoted to one family. The personnel involved have no competing demands from other clients. The team should have an understanding of the family’s affairs that is second to none.
There is an important drawback here. Often the Single Family Office team can be seen as essentially tied to one member or sub-group of a family. They can be ‘Dad’s people’. This association can, in pressured circumstances, generate a perception of partisanship. This in turn can mean that the Single Family Office team is not in a position, for example, to navigate through tricky succession issues or other disputes. Professional organisations are able to deploy different personnel and better manage these perceived conflicts as they bring an inherent independence to the table.
Bespoke
The Single Family Office can be designed perfectly to meet the needs of the family in question. The right expertise can be sourced. There are no commercial pressures on the organisation to do anything other than serve the client family.
However, needs change and a smaller organisation can be less well placed to meet them than a larger, better resourced one.
Alignment of interests
The family can in theory, be confident that their own Single Family Office staff is motivated solely by a desire to do the best for the family. They are not, after all, selling any products.
However, great care should be taken to ensure that the employees’ and employers’ agenda do not diverge. Even in a Single Family Office, staff with investment roles can feel just as compelled to chase performance through inappropriate risk taking as their counterparts in the broader market, especially if their remuneration depends upon it.
This concern extends elsewhere across the multi-disciplinary spectrum. Single Family Office teams may instinctively drift towards their comfort zones in terms of expertise or even areas of personal interest. This is particularly true if they are being encouraged to keep external contact and fees to a minimum. They may, for example, be reluctant to engage lawyers on a specific issue and prefer either to avoid the issue altogether or proceed in the absence of advice. A multi-disciplinary Multi Family Office can afford to retain a breadth of in-house expertise available to advise quickly and cost effectively on a day to day basis.
本文转载自雷梭勒家族办公室，如有侵权，敬请告知删除。
Sooswiss为您提供
瑞士方向私人管家式的定制服务：
1）家族传承 2）财富管理 3）瑞士投资
4）居留计划 5）税务优化 6）家族治理
更多资讯请登录网站 www.sooswiss.com
