Wealth Management

Wealth management is the service a private bank, a wealth manager or a multi-family office sells to coordinate a client’s investments, legal structures, reporting and succession. The label covers very different business models, and the differences matter more than the name: who pays the manager, what they are allowed to sell, and how much of the family’s balance sheet they can actually see.

Core scope

A wealth management relationship usually bundles four things:

• Investment oversight: strategy, manager selection and performance monitoring across asset classes. PWA’s version is independent oversight of how the capital is allocated, never management of it (Investment & Wealth Architecture).
• Wealth planning and structuring: coordinating the lawyers and tax advisors who design the entities, the ownership map and the succession (Wealth Planning & Structuring).
• Risk and protection: insurance coordination, liability review and contingency planning.
• Administration and reporting: consolidated reporting across banks, cash management and document control (Administration & Back Office).

Tax and legal advice themselves belong to regulated professionals. A wealth manager, and PWA in its coordination role, decides who does what and checks that the pieces fit; it does not give the advice.

What is the difference between a private banker and a wealth manager?

A private banker works for a bank: credit, custody and the bank’s product shelf, paid by the bank. A wealth manager plans across investments, structures and succession and is paid through fees, retrocessions or both. Under MiFID II only an advisor declared “independent” must refuse third-party commissions. Neither sees accounts held at other banks unless the family consolidates them.

The four roles a family meets, side by side:

The MiFID II test is the one to ask for in writing. Every firm must tell you before it advises whether the advice is independent (Art. 24(4)(a)); only then do you know whether a retrocession is allowed to stay with your bank.

Wealth management vs. family office

Wealth management is a service you buy. A family office is a structure you run: it holds the reporting, the entities, the advisors and the governance together, whether through a dedicated team or a coordination layer above the banks you already use. Most families buy wealth management until the number of banks, entities and jurisdictions outgrows one relationship; then the question becomes which parts of a family office they need.

The coordination principle

At its core, wealth management solves the same coordination problem a family office solves: making sure the tax advice, the investment strategy, the legal structures and the reporting work towards one plan, instead of each specialist optimising their own domain. PWA sits above banks, lawyers and tax advisors, is paid by the family, and only by the family, and sells no product. PWA does not manage money, hold mandates, take commissions or give regulated investment, tax or legal advice.

Sources

• Directive 2014/65/EU (MiFID II), Article 24: paragraph 4(a) on disclosing whether advice is independent, 7(b) and 8 on the ban on accepting and retaining third-party fees for independent advice and portfolio management, 9 on inducements for other services. Checked 2026-10-06.

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