Multi-family office

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A multi-family office (MFO) is an independent organization that supports multiple families to manage their entire wealth. Multi-family offices typically provide a variety of services including tax and estate planning, risk management, objective financial counsel, trusteeship, lifestyle management, coordination of professionals, investment advice, and philanthropic foundation management. Some multi-family offices are also known to offer personal services such as managing household staff and making travel arrangements. Because the customized services offered by a multi-family office can be costly, clients of a multi-family office typically have a net worth in excess of $50 million.^[1]

A multi-family office (MFO) is a commercial enterprise established to meet the investment, estate planning and, in some cases, the lifestyle and tax service needs of affluent families.

MFOs can be created in one of three ways:

• a single family office opens its doors to additional clients or merges with another single family office
• as a start up by a team of advisors (typically with some combination of investment, tax and or legal professional credentials)
• an existing financial institution (most often a bank or brokerage firm) creates an MFO subsidiary or division.

In the United States, many MFOs are registered investment advisors, some are trust companies and a handful are accounting or law firms.