Notes

How wealth management firms can prepare for turbulent times [Farnoush Farsiar]
Generational shifts Global mobility. Technological transformation. Farnoush Farsiar of EU Today notes these are only a few of the major changes that have affected family offices and fundamentally threatening their operations and practices.

Family offices are catering more and more to the mobile, younger generation. Everyone, regardless of age, have become interested, regardless of their financial status in managing their personal investment portfolios. This means that they are looking for more involvement and information, not just a portfolio manager to manage.

The changes are occurring during a time of the economic and political turmoil. If family offices maintain their current strategies, they may find that the very individuals they were created to help will leave them. They need to adapt to a more entrepreneur-like approach in the field of investment management, to provide UHNWIs a true value proposition.

While family offices can differ in both size and their scope, they should prioritise flexibility over the need to be experts in every area. Customers will appreciate a smaller group of advisors that can quickly adopting new technologies and the hiring of external experts when required. These changes will result in the blurring of the lines between family offices and private banking. The most successful firms will keep the trust and loyalty of family offices, while staying ahead of the curve with technology and purchasing deals.

It is crucial to be able to use the traditional, network-based and reputation-based methods of deal sourcing. These tools can be used to identify deals and opportunities. Private offices and wealth managers which can handle large amounts of deals on the internet are superior to banks with a cumbersome structure. These platforms make it possible for dealmakers to review multiple deals simultaneously and reduce time and effort.

Other online services that are changing how family offices interact with their customers include dashboard services, such as Wealthica, which automatically consolidate investment portfolios from various sources, bringing clients to daily interaction with their investments. This is which is a vast improvement over the days when wealth managers offered only periodic information on the status of their customers' funds.

They're not tools for anything else they're the tools that wealth managers can improve their effectiveness and speed. Their investment strategy is the primary aspect. In the end, the advantage comes from combining the old and the modern - continuing to search out opportunities in real estate, whilst also exploring investments in fields that were previously unexplored like climate science or food security. Impact investing has definitely 'arrived" within the realm of family offices , according to the UBS Global Family Office Report 2018 found that a third of family offices were involved in impact investing. Many expect to be more involved in the near future. While there are undoubtedly problems in this area, such as the difficulty of monitoring impact and executing due diligence, the upcoming generation of HNWIs as well as UHNWIs will expect family offices to be able identify and secure these kinds of investments. Plato Capital is a boutique bank that offers investment advice. It draws on the expertise of its founders from big banks, family offices and the technology industry to provide entrepreneurial investment advice. Our local expertise and networks allow us to help our clients successfully manage risk while maximizing the capital return.

All types of wealth managers are able to succeed during turbulent times, by mixing the old with the new while experimenting and risking their structure and methods.
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