Operations & risk
Talent, technology, costs, security and due diligence inside the family office.
Multiple home ownership is creating new challenges for family offices
Wealthy families now move between homes across several countries, most of them empty for much of the year. Jo Eccles, a London buying agent and property manager, on why running those portfolios has outgrown the in-house model.
A cloned voice and a WhatsApp message moved €95m out of Intesa's private bank
Fideuram, Intesa Sanpaolo's private banking arm, sent about €95m abroad in February after its chairman was deceived by a fake message and an AI-generated voice. Roughly €53m came back. The rest became cryptocurrency.
A €17.5m broker fee, a family office, and a ChatGPT search
Nik Storonsky's defence to a yacht brokerage's commission claim, filed at the High Court this month, turns on who found the seller. Introduction fees on passion assets are rarely documented as carefully as the rest of a family office's contracts.
Family offices plan to outsource more, Ocorian survey finds
A survey of 200 family offices managing $119 billion found 77 per cent expect to lean more on third-party specialists, from illiquid investments to cyber security.
Callan Family Office takes a stake in estate-planning software firm Vanilla
A US multifamily office has made a strategic investment in estate-planning technology firm Vanilla, with a joint roadmap aimed at the complex structures that standard planning software struggles to model.
Families protect the balance sheet, not the house. A new report maps the gap.
The State of Family Office Security 2026, a study by Presage Global and Nines, finds that most family offices apply institutional rigour to investments and tax but leave the home largely unmanaged. Sixty-two per cent of household staff receive no security training at all.
Family offices are closing. The families are richer than ever.
Running a single family office costs $6.6 million a year for a $1 billion portfolio. Some families have decided the numbers no longer work.
When family members work in the family office
Employing relatives can deepen commitment or quietly corrode the office. The difference is whether the same rules apply to everyone.
Security, privacy and reputation for principal families
Wealth makes a family findable. Protecting it is less about gadgets than about habits, discretion and who you let close.
Family offices are investing in AI. Most of them are not actually using it.
Two thirds of family offices say AI is a priority investment theme. Fewer than a quarter use it internally. The gap between allocation and adoption is wide.
The unglamorous backbone: operations, data and cyber risk
Operations, data and cyber risk are the unglamorous backbone of a family office, and the area wealthy families most often neglect until something breaks.
Staffing a family office: the traits that matter most
Who to hire first in a family office, the traits that matter more than the CV, and how to avoid the key-person risk that quietly threatens small teams.
The true cost of a single family office
The real cost of running a single family office goes well beyond salaries. What families underestimate, and the point at which an SFO stops making sense.
The week in family offices
One email a week: what moved across family offices and private wealth, and what it means.