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.
Why 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.
