Best Practices

Jay Kolbe is co-founder and senior managing partner of Impact Partners, a strategic communications firm that works with family offices. He explains how external communications can help family offices achieve their goals.

At our June ALIGN 2025 conference for family offices and the families they serve, family office executives discussed nuts-and-bolts topics such as the growth of outsourcing, as well as technological advances that could both lead to investment opportunities and transform family offices’ internal operations. They also took bigger-picture looks at strategies to help family members stay connected through change.

What services do family offices most commonly outsource versus insource? And what are the reasons for these choices?

Should a family office prepare tax returns for family members? Arrange vacation travel? Help with estate plans? Are these services also available to all family members, including those who are married in? Are there fees associated with the services? There are as many answers to these kinds of questions as there are family offices in operation. We asked several professionals how their family office approached decisions about which services to provide and to whom.

New research has found family offices are increasingly expanding their reach to open offices in different jurisdictions: Almost 80% of family offices have done so in the past five years. Here are the top reasons for these moves.