Family Office Design and Setup
Family Office Design
Designing a family office requires thoughtful planning, clear purpose, and alignment among family members and advisors. Big Canyon Advisors helps families determine whether a family office is appropriate and designs structure to support their long-term legacy, governance, and financial objectives.
What is Family Office Design?
Family office design is the process of determining how a family's office should be structured to support its unique goals, complexity, and long-term vision. This includes defining the services the office will provide, deciding which functions should be performed internally or outsourced, establishing governance, selecting technology, coordinating trusted advisors, and developing an implementation roadmap. Thoughtful design helps ensure the family office grows alongside the family's needs rather than reacting to them over time.
When Families Consider Creating a Family Office
Families often begin exploring a family office when their wealth, enterprises, and responsibilities become too complex to manage informally. The first step is clarifying the purpose of the office and what it should accomplish in both the short and long term.
Once that vision is defined, we work with the family and their advisors to design each component of the office, determining which functions should be handled internally and which should remain with external providers, so the structure seamlessly supports the family’s legacy across generations.
What is a Family Office?
A family office is an organization created to oversee and manage the financial and administrative needs of a specific family, effectively transferring wealth across generations.
Family offices typically:
- Operate like a company
- Range from small teams of two professionals to offices with dozens of staff
- May operate as a separate legal entity, often an LLC, or be embedded within a family operating company
Why Families Create a Family Office
Families may create a family office to:
- Protect family privacy and confidentiality
- Maintain greater control over family assets
- Reduce administrative burden on family members as wealth and holdings grow
- Ensure continuity of family legacy and values across generations
- Oversee family enterprises such as businesses, real estate, and philanthropy
- Manage family wealth to pass it down over multiple generations
- Pool family resources to access broader investment opportunities and better pricing
- Integrate the many advisors and service providers working with the family
- Manage risks affecting the family
Our Family Office Design Process
1. Gather Data
Such as the family tree, ownership structures, entities, and current service providers.
2. Conduct Interviews
Conversations with family members, key staff, and existing advisors.
3. Analysis
Careful review of the information gathered to identify needs, gaps, and opportunities.
4. Design Workshop
A collaborative session with family members and advisors to define the office's structure and responsibilities.
5. Implementation Planning
Refinement of the design and development of a timeline and process for establishing the family office.
How do we know if we should form a family office?
Our family and business have grown over the years. We now have multiple entities, trusts, investments and advisors, but we're not sure we're "big enough" for a family office. How do we know?
Complexity often becomes a better indicator than net worth alone. Multiple business entities, trusts, investment portfolios, philanthropic activities, and family governance needs may all point toward the benefits of a thoughtfully designed family office.
We help you evaluate your family's needs, existing advisors, organizational complexity, and long-term goals to determine whether a family office makes sense, what type is appropriate, and whether the benefits justify the cost.
What is a virtual family office?
We already have good tax, legal, insurance and investment advisors. Do we really need a family office?
Many families don't need to build a large in-house organization. Instead, they benefit from a Virtual Family Office, where trusted outside specialists continue providing their expertise while a dedicated individual or small team coordinates everything, keeps everyone aligned, and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
A Virtual Family Office often provides many of the same benefits as a traditional Single Family Office while remaining more flexible and cost-effective.
Should we hire a family office executive before creating a plan?
We're thinking about hiring a family office executive. Should we do that first?
Usually, no. Before hiring anyone, it's important to define the services your family office will provide, how it will interact with existing advisors, what authority it will have, and what success looks like.
Once the design is complete, you can hire the right person for the role instead of trying to fit the role around the person.
Designing the family office first almost always leads to better hiring decisions and a clearer definition of responsibilities.
Where do we start when creating a family office?
Every family office begins with understanding the family's objectives.
"We're interested in a family office but don't know what the first step should be."
We begin with a structured design process that helps you clarify your family's objectives, identify the services you actually need, determine the right operating model, and develop an implementation roadmap.
Whether you ultimately build a Single Family Office, a Virtual Family Office, or decide your current structure is sufficient, you'll have confidence you're making the right decision.
Family Office Design & Setup FAQ's
What is a family office?
A family office is a centralized organization that helps manage a family's financial, business, administrative, governance, and legacy objectives. Every family office is different because every family's goals and complexity are different.
When should a family consider creating a family office?
Many families begin exploring a family office as their wealth, businesses, investments, philanthropic activities, or administrative responsibilities become increasingly complex.
Does every wealthy family need a family office?
No. A family office is one possible solution, but it is not the right fit for every family. We help families objectively evaluate whether establishing a family office aligns with their needs, goals, and long-term vision.
What services can a family office provide?
Services vary by family but may include investment coordination, accounting, reporting, governance support, philanthropy administration, education, technology, risk management, lifestyle services, and family communication.
Can we outsource some family office functions?
Yes. Many successful family offices use a combination of internal staff and outsourced specialists. We help families determine which functions should be performed internally and which can be effectively provided by trusted outside professionals.
How long does it take to design a family office?
Every family is different. The timeline depends on the complexity of the family enterprise, the desired services, governance decisions, staffing, and implementation priorities.
Can you help improve an existing family office?
Yes. We regularly advise families that want to refine or redesign an existing family office as their needs change over time.
