To help clients develop more effective Virtual Family Offices so that they may build, transfer and preserve their wealth with higher organizational efficiency and more meaningful success.
The term “Family Office” was originally coined to describe a family-controlled business that provides centralized management to a significant family fortune. Typically, these organizations employ a staff of professionals who invest the family’s money, manage all the family’s assets, and disburse payments to family members as required. Fully integrated and independent Family Offices serving one family have come to be known as “Single-Family Offices.”
Families looking to avoid paying the high operational costs of running a Single-Family Office gave rise to “Multi-Family Offices”. In a “private” Multi-Family Office, a group of families exclusively share the costs and services of a fully staffed Family Office. In a “public” Multi-Family Office, commercial service firms provide comprehensive Family Office services to a group of families. Families looking to achieve the benefits of a Family Office, but who prefer the “do it yourself” approach, form “Virtual Family Offices.” A Virtual Family Office provides the structure for the family itself to control and manage its own wealth. It is typically headed by a senior family member who oversees routine activities and coordinates outside advisors and outsourced services.
Asset management firms and, more recently, private banks, offer the bulk of commercial Family Office services in the market. Because these companies tie their fees to a percentage of assets under management and commissions on investment returns, they market their commercial Family Office services exclusively to families with wealth levels in the top .15% – typically worth over $40 million dollars in today’s economy. This is why most people have never heard of the “Family Office” concept. Yet millions of Virtual Family Offices exist today. And millions more are unknowingly formed every year as a necessary measure to face the complex world of family wealth management. Certainly, Virtual Family Offices formed inadvertently can accomplish important wealth management functions. However, Virtual Family Offices formed out of reactive necessity are usually poorly structured and rarely develop to their full potential.
The Ventura Legacy Group, APC was founded with a Mission to help clients improve their Virtual Family Office structures so that they may build, transfer and preserve their wealth with higher organizational efficiency and more meaningful success. Our focus is to offer clients unique service options that help better meet the new socioeconomic challenges emerging in today’s family wealth planning arena. At a time where the aging baby boomers have begun transferring their wealth – and in the process unleashing the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history – more families are now faced with new and increasingly complex organizational challenges that stem from our evolving service-economy, the emerging technology-powered industrial revolution, and the perpetual expansion of government.
Our new service delivery model offers clients more comprehensive services in various interrelated areas of law, primarily in the areas of estate, business and tax planning. Our interdisciplinary services also include administrative support. Ultimately, we lessen the burdens of hiring multiple advisors, which allows our clients to be more effective in their efforts to build, transfer and preserve their wealth.