Family office, wealth manager or do it yourself: what fits when

A single family office, meaning staff employed by one family to run that family's wealth, cost its owners on average 0.41 per cent of the assets in 2024 for the office alone, according to UBS's survey of 317 family offices. That only works from a nine-figure fortune upwards. Below it, the sensible choices are a multi family office, a wealth manager for the liquid part, or doing it yourself with an adviser by the hour. In all four cases three things stay with the family: the overview, the documents and the decisions.

What a single family office costs, and from what size it pays

The best public figures come from the UBS Global Family Office Report 2025, published on 21 May 2025. Its participants are large: on average USD 1.1 billion managed by the office and USD 2.7 billion of family net worth. They employ twelve people on average. The "pure cost" of running the office, which is staff, premises, IT, legal and research, was 41.1 basis points of assets in 2024. Two thirds of that is salaries. Offices managing USD 100 to 250 million expect about 42 basis points for 2025, those above USD 1 billion about 35.

That pure cost is only 57 per cent of what these families spend in total. Asset management fees paid to outside managers account for another 21 per cent, bank fees for 10 per cent and external structures for 8 per cent. The office does not replace those costs. It sits on top of them.

Now turn the percentage round. A minimal office is an experienced investment person, someone for accounting and reporting, and part of an assistant, plus rooms, systems and advisers. Assume, purely for illustration, EUR 600,000 a year. At 0.4 per cent of assets that corresponds to EUR 150 million. At EUR 30 million the same office costs 2 per cent a year, before a single fund fee is paid. The exact numbers will differ from family to family; the shape does not. An own office is a fixed cost, and a fixed cost needs a large base.

Cost is also not the main reason families give for doing things in-house. In the UBS survey the top reasons were having the expertise (67 per cent), operational control (63 per cent) and privacy (63 per cent). Cost-effectiveness came fifth. A family that sets up an office below the size where the arithmetic works is buying control and discretion, and should say so to itself.

The four models side by side

We give no percentage for multi family offices and wealth managers because we know of no public survey that is comparable to the UBS figures. Ask for the all-in number in euros per year: the fee, the cost of the products used, transaction costs and custody. A provider who cannot state it has answered a different question.

Where the regulator draws the line

In Germany the difference between the models is also a legal one. BaFin's guidance note on family offices (as of July 2018) defines them as firms that manage large private fortunes independently of banks. A family's own office that serves only that family and does not offer its services on the market falls outside the licensing regime. A firm that manages portfolios with discretion for several families (Finanzportfolioverwaltung) or gives investment advice (Anlageberatung) needs a licence.

The same note lists what needs no licence: general advice to wealthy clients, bookkeeping, controlling, and supervising the asset managers. That list is worth reading twice. It describes the work that remains when the investing itself has been handed to someone licensed, and it is the work that is easiest to leave undone.

What a wealth manager does not cover

A discretionary mandate covers a securities account. For readers of this blog that is often the smaller half. The wealth manager does not see the capital call that arrives by e-mail from a fund administrator in Luxembourg, the convertible loan you signed for a start-up last spring, or the loan on a rental property whose fixed rate ends in two years. He reports on the account he manages, accurately, and the report shows a diversified portfolio. Whether the whole is diversified, he cannot know.

This is the gap that matters for a mixed portfolio. Someone with EUR 5 to 50 million across several kinds of asset can be well served for the liquid part and not at all for the rest, and the rest is where the surprises are: an unfunded commitment nobody has added up, a stake recorded at its purchase price from four years ago, a guarantee given for a holding company.

A multi family office closes that gap if consolidated reporting across all assets is part of the mandate. Ask to see a sample report with a fund commitment, a direct stake and a property in it before signing. Some firms consolidate everything. Others consolidate what their custodian banks deliver and add the rest as a line of text.

What stays with the family in every model

The overview. One list of everything owned and owed, in one currency, with a date on each value. Even a single family office produces this for the family, not instead of it. Someone in the family has to be able to read it and notice when a number is wrong.

The documents. Subscription agreements, shareholder agreements, loan contracts, capital account statements, tax notices. Advisers change, banks merge, a multi family office is sold. If the only complete set is in a provider's system, the family is dependent in a way no fee schedule shows. Keep your own copy, in an order a successor could follow.

The decisions. How much goes into illiquid assets, which commitments are signed, when a property is sold, who inherits what. A mandate delegates the execution inside limits you set. It does not delegate the limits.

Doing it yourself, honestly

Doing it yourself is the right model more often than the industry suggests, and it fails for a predictable reason. The investing is the easy part: a private investor with ten fund commitments and a dozen stakes makes perhaps five real decisions a year. What fails is the record. We described the signs in when the spreadsheet stops working: the unfunded total nobody can state, the IRR with broken dates.

So if you run your own wealth, treat the record as the job. Book every call and distribution from the document, when it arrives. Keep the documents where a second person can find them. Have the tax adviser look at the whole once a year, not only at the tax return. This is the work Valued was built for, since we had the same problem with our own holdings. A carefully kept spreadsheet does the same, as long as someone keeps it.

And review the model when the facts change. A sale of the family company, an inheritance, a second generation joining: each of these can move a family from one row of the table to the next. Moving one row is normal. Jumping straight to an own office because the sum has become large is the expensive mistake.