Multi-family office

A multi-family office (MFO) is a firm that serves several families from one shared team and platform. Each family gets reporting, administration, advisor coordination and often investment services, at a cost spread across all the clients. It is the shared version of a family office; the dedicated version is a single-family office.

How a multi-family office works

An MFO runs one reporting system, one administration team and one set of processes for every client. That is the source of its economics: the family pays for a share of the platform, not for the whole of it. The trade-off is standardisation. Reports, review cycles and service menus are built for the typical client, and a family with an unusual structure fits them less well.

MFOs differ most in two respects:

• Ownership. Some are independent. Others belong to a bank or an asset manager and sit inside its distribution.
• Payment. Some charge the family a fee and nothing else. Others earn part of their revenue from the products they place, through retrocession or in-house funds.

What is the difference between a multi-family office and a single-family office?

A single-family office works for one family only, with its own staff and a structure designed around that family. A multi-family office serves many families from a shared team and platform. The single-family office offers full control at a high fixed cost; the multi-family office offers lower cost in exchange for standardised service and shared attention.

Ask who owns it and who pays it

What the brochure does not say is who else pays the MFO. A bank-owned MFO can be good at reporting and still have a reason to keep your assets on its own platform. A fee that looks low can be low because product revenue covers the rest. Ask for the full fee basis in writing, and ask whether any part of the firm’s income depends on what it recommends.

For families and founders who are complex but not yet large, an MFO is often the first serious option offered, usually by the bank they already use. Compare it with the alternative described in what is wealth advisory: an independent layer above the banks, paid by the family, and only by the family. PWA designs and runs the operating layer around private wealth, through administration and back office and investment and wealth architecture. PWA does not manage money, hold mandates, take commissions or give regulated investment, tax or legal advice.

Before you sign an MFO proposal, a written second opinion can test its scope and fee basis against what your family actually needs.

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This entry is part of PWA’s plain-language glossary of terms used in modern family office architecture.