Succession planning

Succession planning, for a family, is the work of deciding in advance how ownership, control and knowledge of the family’s business and wealth pass to the next generation. It is not the HR practice of the same name, which prepares replacements for key roles inside a company: the family sense is about the owners, not the organisation chart.

The three layers of succession

A complete plan covers three layers, and each has different owners:

• Ownership: who will hold the shares, properties and accounts. This is the territory of wills, a holding company, trusts and gifts during life, all within the inheritance rules of each jurisdiction, such as the forced-heirship share (legítima) in Portugal and Spain.
• Control: who will decide. Board seats, voting rights, the family constitution and the family council sit here.
• Information: who will know. The map of entities, the list of accounts and custodians, the contacts at each bank, where the documents live and who holds the passwords.

Lawyers handle the first layer and, sometimes, the second. The third is usually missing, and it is the one heirs need on the first day.

What is succession planning for a family business?

Succession planning for a family business is the process of preparing the transfer of the company and the wealth around it to the next generation. It decides who will own the shares, who will run or oversee the business, and how the heirs will get the information and relationships they need to act from the first day.

What the bank’s succession offer leaves out

A private bank usually presents succession as a product: a structure, an insurance wrapper, a mandate for the heirs. That may be part of the answer, and our comparison of the best private bank for succession looks at what banks do well here. What a bank cannot do is see the assets held at other banks, the property held directly, or the company itself.

For families in the €2–20M range, the typical failure is not a missing will. It is heirs inheriting structures they cannot see: entities nobody listed, land with unclear title, accounts that surface months later. Our case file on land, physical assets and succession shows how that unfolds.

PWA designs and runs the operating layer around private wealth: we build and maintain the information layer, and coordinate the lawyers and advisors who handle ownership, through our wealth planning and structuring and family governance and education work. To test whether your plan covers all three layers, ask for a written second opinion.

---

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