What is Wealth Management: ‘Multi-Family Office’
Welcome to What is Wealth Management podcast, where I take a topic that wealth managers love to use, but most of the general public has no idea what it means. I call it demystifying the world of wealth management.
Today we are talking about family offices, and specifically the term multi-family office.
Let’s first start by describing who the family office is for.
As wealth grows, so does complexity. Many ultra-high-net-worth families find themselves juggling investments, tax strategy, estate planning, philanthropy, and family decision-making – often across generations and entities. It doesn’t take long before this complexity becomes overwhelming, or at the very least, inefficient.
That’s where the multi-family office (MFO) model comes in.
A multi-family office is a modern evolution of the traditional single-family office – offering the same high level of service and coordination, but across a curated group of families rather than one. Instead of building and staffing a dedicated in-house team, families gain access to a full suite of services delivered by an experienced, integrated team.
At its core, a multi-family office brings together the financial, legal, operational, and emotional aspects of wealth under one roof – so the right hand always knows what the left hand is doing.
How Does it Compare to a Traditional Family Office?
While single-family offices are often built by families with $100M+ in assets, the multi-family office model offers a more accessible path to comprehensive service. Both structures prioritize:
• Customized wealth planning
• Investment strategy and execution
• Tax and estate planning
• Philanthropic guidance
• Family governance and education
The key difference is scale. A multi-family office shares the infrastructure across multiple families, without sacrificing privacy or personalization. This makes it possible to offer a high-caliber experience without the cost and complexity of building a team from scratch.
Why are Families Turning to MFOs?
Most families don’t realize just how disconnected their current setup is – until they see what’s possible with integration. Wealth advisors, CPAs, estate attorneys, and trustees often work in silos, leaving the burden of coordination on the family.
A multi-family office lifts that burden. It becomes the single point of clarity – aligning strategies, surfacing blind spots, and helping families move from reactive to proactive.
That is it for this version of What is Wealth Management. Join me next time for another session on demystifying the phrases and terminology that our industry loves to use, but the general public has very little knowledge about…