What does it really cost to run a family office your size?
Answer three sets of questions about the office, the portfolio and what the family keeps in-house. We return the annual cost of running it — by expense line, with the range we see in practice. No sign-up required.
The family office
Size, seat and the number of people the office actually serves. These four answers set the floor for everything that follows.
Asset allocation
Enter shares of AUM. Whatever you leave unallocated is treated as cash.
Scope of services
What the office does itself, and what it buys. These seven answers move the number more than size does. The defaults are what we see most often.
What you pay to invest usually exceeds what you pay to run the office.
The figure above covers people, providers, systems and structure. It does not cover manager fees, embedded fund costs, custody, trading, selection, or carried interest — and for most families those add up to more than the office itself.
We prepare that second analysis for your own numbers and send it by email. It is not shown here, and it is not something we publish.
Illustrative only — the figures in this panel are placeholders, not your result. Your own are prepared and sent by email.
Where these figures come from, and why we give you a range.
Built from mandates, not surveys
The model reflects offices we have set up, reset and run alongside families since 2013 — compensation levels, provider fees and structural costs as they are actually paid, in each of the jurisdictions listed.
The range is the honest part
Two families of identical size can differ by half again in cost, on decisions no model can see: seniority of the hires, the standard the principal expects, how much the office absorbs that nobody wrote down. The spread carries that.
An estimate, not a budget
Use it to test whether what you pay today is defensible, and to frame the conversation with your principals. A real budget needs the office in front of us. We do not publish the underlying assumptions.
Before you trust a number.
For most single family offices the answer sits between 70 and 140 basis points of assets under management a year — a range wide enough that the average is of little use to you. Composition matters more than size: an office that keeps oversight, execution and accounting in-house costs a multiple of one that buys them.
Below roughly $250M the fixed cost of a credible team is hard to justify against what it saves, unless the family has operating businesses, unusual complexity, or a reason of control that outweighs the arithmetic. Above $1B the question reverses: the risk is no longer cost but drift.
Because two families of the same size routinely differ by half again, on choices no model can observe. The single figure is the centre of what we see; the range is what the decisions of the principal do to it.
No. Manager fees, embedded fund costs, custody, trading, selection and carried interest are a separate analysis — and for most families a larger number than the one on this page. We prepare it on your figures and send it by email.
No. The salary benchmarks, ratios and factors behind it are our own work and stay with us. What we will do is walk you through your own result, line by line, and tell you where we think your office is over- or under-built.
If the number surprised you, that is worth an hour of a partner's time.
We take on a small number of mandates each year. Tell us what you are looking at and we will tell you what we see, including what you may not want to hear.
Where should we send it?
Manager and fund fees by asset class, custody, trading, selection and carried interest — with three return scenarios and the total cost as a share of the gain. Prepared on the answers you have just given.
One email with the analysis. We do not add you to a list and we do not pass your details on.
Thank you — check your inbox shortly.
The analysis is being prepared on the answers you gave and will arrive by email within a few minutes. If anything in it deserves a conversation, reply to that email and it reaches a partner directly.