What a Family Office Costs in Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg and Geneva

Same family, same portfolio, same scope of services: depending on the city it sits in, the same family office can cost almost twice as much to run. We put two profiles through our calculator in Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg and Geneva, and priced everything in euros.

Two families each hold €500m, with the same portfolio and the same needs. One sets up its family office in Brussels, the other in Geneva. The first will spend about €2.4m a year to run it, the second about €4.5m.

We put two single family office profiles, one at €150m and one at €500m, through our family office cost calculator in four cities that French-speaking families often weigh against each other: Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg and Geneva. All figures are in euros. For Geneva, the model prices the office in Switzerland and converts the result into euros.

The two family offices compared

Both profiles share the same allocation and the same scope of services. Only the size and the city change.

What it costs at €500m

Paris and Brussels are close. Luxembourg costs about 30% more than Paris, Geneva nearly 80% more. At this size the office has salaried leadership, a small investment team and its own accounting. It is a real team, and the team is what costs money.

What it costs at €150m

At €150m, families do not hire a chief executive or a chief investment officer. The principal stays close to investment decisions, a few generalists handle accounting and monitoring, and advice is bought in. The calculator prices that lean office as it actually runs. The amounts fall, but the cost as a share of assets rises: 0.8% in Paris, 1.4% in Geneva. The gap between cities stays in roughly the same proportions.

Where the gap comes from

Almost entirely from salaries. Here is the €500m profile, line by line.

The first four lines are people. Between Brussels and Geneva they double. External providers rise by only about 40%, because an international law firm or auditor charges fees that vary far less between countries than local salaries do. IT barely moves.

For Geneva we used Geneva pay levels, slightly below the Swiss index the calculator applies by default, which also takes in Zurich. Run on "Switzerland", the calculator gives €4.75m for the €500m profile.

What the city does not change

The cost of investing the money. In our €500m example, the fees paid to managers and funds, custody and trading come to about €4.5m a year before carried interest, in Paris as in Geneva. At €150m, about €1.4m.

Across the whole bill, the gap between cities therefore narrows. At €500m the total runs from about €7.0m in Brussels to €9.1m in Geneva: 30% more, not double. We look at that second half of the bill in what the family pays, and to whom.

What the calculator does not price

The choice of a city rarely turns on running cost alone. The tax residence of family members, the regulatory status of the office, employment law, access to trusted banks and advisers, the language of the family and its staff all count as much, often more. Those questions are handled with specialist advisers, country by country, and the calculator does not answer them.

Nor does it price the one-off cost of setting up or moving: hiring, departures, advice, new banking relationships, months of running two set-ups at once. That cost depends mostly on how the project is run.

Setting up or moving a family office is a coordination project

Setting up a family office, or moving one to another country, involves a lot of people at the same time. The family first, with its residence choices, its governance, and generations that do not always want the same thing. Then the office team, whose contracts need reviewing, whose departure or relocation has to be organised, and who may need new hires in a market the family knows less well. Then the providers: banks, custodians, lawyers, tax advisers, accountants, administrators of the family's structures, each with its own timetable and its own reading of the file.

Each of them does its job well. The trouble is that nobody holds the whole thing together. A tax decision arrives after a lease has been signed, a hire waits for an entity that does not exist yet, a bank opens an account in the name of a company about to change.

Westwick works with families on projects of this kind, and our partners lead them. They have set up, reset and run family offices from the inside, and they know that a move between countries is rarely a tax question only. It shifts the balance between family members, changes the daily work of the team and the way the office runs. Our partners also know the providers in each of these cities, which gets a new office working quickly. We act as the link between the family, the team and the providers, and we hold the timetable until everything runs.

For a first reading of your situation, talk to a partner. For a first order of magnitude, run the calculator with your own profile and city.

Method

Figures produced by the Westwick family office cost calculator, model version 1.6.0 (October 2026), in euros. The model calculates in US dollars and converts at 1 June 2026 rates. For Geneva, pay reflects the Geneva market, slightly below the calculator's national Swiss index, and costs are converted into euros at €1 to CHF 0.909; Swiss franc amounts are shown in brackets. The ranges reflect the spread we see between families with the same profile. Running costs match the calculator's public estimate; investment costs come from its full analysis. The method is set out in how the calculator works.