For families considering starting a family office — or those who want to modernize an established office — Deloitte’s Essential tax and wealth planning guide, 2024 edition, contains useful information in a chapter entitled “Setting up the family office: Protecting your legacy.”
The guide starts with the basics: the definition of a family office and reasons families may decide to start one: A family business grows large enough that the nonbusiness operations need to be separated from it; the family has a liquidity event; or a hedge fund or private equity fund evolves into a family office (after redeeming out third-party investors).
The report also provides details on:
- Which services, from strategic services to technology, are often provided in house vs. which are often outsourced.
- Operational considerations including board oversight, succession and contingency planning, and communications.
- Leading practices regarding talent management, such as establishing a formal hiring and onboarding process and creating long-term succession and development plans.
- Trends in family office investing and more general trends that could reshape family offices: technology, virtual work, philanthropy and direct private equity.
Although much of the information is most applicable to new family offices, there is also a section on transforming an existing family office by improving data collection or technology, for example, or modernizing the tax function.
The other chapters of the report examine tax policy, how to achieve a family’s philanthropic goals, and considerations for owners of pass-through entities.
