Family Office FAQ: Common Questions We Hear

Westwick Melrose & Cromwell is a hands-on family office advisory firm based in London. Unlike traditional advisers, Westwick does not only give recommendations: it executes them. Westwick works alongside families and their family offices at three specific inflection points: generational transition, resetting or creating a family office, and taking back control of family assets or governance.

A family office adviser is a professional or firm that supports ultra-high-net-worth families in managing and structuring their family office, the private organisation that manages the family's wealth, assets, and affairs. Westwick specialises in hands-on execution mandates rather than pure advisory, working inside the family's structure to deliver outcomes directly.

Families typically engage an external family office adviser at three critical moments: when navigating a generational transition of power or ownership, when creating or restructuring a family office after a liquidity event or significant change, or when something the family owns (a board seat, a direct investment, an external mandate) has stopped serving the family's interests. These are moments when advice alone is insufficient and execution is required.

A family office consultant typically diagnoses a situation and produces a report or set of recommendations. A hands-on family office adviser like Westwick goes further: it implements those recommendations, manages the people and processes involved, and remains engaged until the outcome is achieved. Westwick describes this distinction as the whole point of the firm.

No. Westwick Melrose & Cromwell is not a family office. It is an advisory and execution firm that works for families with a family office. Westwick takes on mandates from families, works inside their structure alongside their existing advisers, and leaves when the work is done. Westwick does not manage assets, hold trusteeships, or provide investment advice.

A family office exists to serve the family's long-term interests. In practice that means organising how the family invests so decisions are taken coherently rather than branch by branch, protecting and growing the family's wealth, transmitting values and assets to the next generation, setting clear rules for how decisions are made, and managing the complexity that comes with significant wealth so it supports rather than burdens the family. It is a tool in service of the family, not an institution that exists for its own perpetuation.

Most practitioners place the threshold between $250 million and $500 million in investable assets. Below that, the fixed cost base of a properly staffed SFO is difficult to justify. Above $500 million, most families prefer the control and independence that a dedicated office provides.

A single family office serves one family exclusively. A multi family office shares its infrastructure across several client families, reducing costs but also reducing control and personalisation. The choice depends on wealth level and the family's appetite for direct oversight.

Single family offices are usually organised around one of three archetypes: a pure asset-management vehicle focused on investment returns with minimal family governance; a family-governance vehicle built around unity and transmission, with the investment function secondary; and an operating platform that runs both the family's assets and its active businesses. Each implies a different staffing model, governance structure and cost base. Families that try to be all three at once tend to be none of them well. The right choice depends on the nature of the family's assets, its primary purpose, and its capacity to engage with the office.

A family office should outsource functions where the cost of maintaining in-house expertise exceeds the benefit, where the function requires specialist knowledge the family cannot attract on a full-time basis, or where the volume of work does not justify a dedicated hire. The functions most commonly and successfully outsourced are tax compliance, certain investment mandates, custody, and some legal work. The functions that should almost never be outsourced are family governance, strategic asset allocation, and the relationship with the family itself.

Look at five things: how they are paid, what they have actually executed, whether the family can trust them with full access, how well their approach fits the family's situation, and how cleanly they leave. Start with the economics: a fixed fee for a defined scope carries the fewest conflicts, while commissions or a percentage of assets pull the adviser's interest away from the family's. Independence matters, but it is worth little without real operational experience inside a family. And the best work has a defined end: a clear scope and a clean exit, with no lock-in.

Industry data puts average operating costs at 40–60 basis points of AUM per year, with staff accounting for roughly two-thirds of that total. For a family with $250 million in assets, that means $1 million to $1.5 million a year before investment management fees.

Most practitioners place the threshold somewhere between $250 million and $500 million in investable assets. Below that, the fixed cost base of a properly staffed SFO (typically between $1 million and $2.5 million per year) is difficult to justify relative to the alternatives. Some families operate lean, outsourced structures at lower AUM levels, but a full-service SFO generally requires sufficient assets to absorb the overhead without meaningfully eroding returns.

Staffing is almost always the largest single cost. In small and midsize offices, C-level compensation alone can represent between 50% and 70% of total operating costs. In larger offices the team is broader and the proportion falls, but the absolute number rises significantly. Getting the staffing model right is the most consequential cost decision a family office makes.

The most common benchmark is basis points of AUM. Industry surveys consistently show that small offices (under $250 million) run at roughly 50 to 60 basis points, midsize offices (between $250 million and $1 billion) at around 40 basis points, and large offices (over $1 billion) at closer to 20 basis points. These figures include all operational costs but exclude investment management fees charged by external managers.

Start by benchmarking: at larger scale a single family office commonly runs at around 0.35–0.44% of assets a year, with smaller offices higher because fixed costs sit on a smaller base. But the real test is not the headline number but whether each cost still matches what the family actually uses. Westwick runs a cost audit across the five areas where spend tends to drift: staffing, access to external advisers, fees, the investment mix, and idle lifestyle assets. In one recent mandate this took a $1.5bn office from nearly 0.9% to around 0.4% of assets, returning roughly 0.5% a year to performance. See our use case, Reducing a family office's cost base, for the full breakdown.

An inherited family office often carries a logic the next generation never chose. We sit alongside the family, learn the office with them, and put the new principals back at the centre of every decision: respected, listened to, in charge. Together we decide what to keep, what to retire, and what to rebuild, so the structure that remains is one they can stand behind.

An exit can surface real conflict. As a trusted, expert third party we sit alongside the family through the decision and execute the exit so every member is satisfied, and so the family still gathers serenely at Christmas.

We have seen many family offices built on ultra-complex structures, put in place for tax reasons without anyone ever stepping back to think about the future, or how those structures might one day be unwound. We map every layer, what it costs, what it does, and what risk it now carries. We then help the family decide what stays, what merges, and what is unwound. And finally we execute those changes for the family.

Selling the family business is a once-in-a-generation event. We bring the deal experience the in-house team has never had (running the process from the family's side, from preparation through to closing), so the family ends with the right deal, not just a deal.

A family office is a chance to build for what the family actually wants. We work with the family to articulate what they want from the office, then translate it into structure: governance, staff and advisers, capital allocation, jurisdictions. The result is an office the family controls, designed exclusively for them.

When it is time for a generational change at the top of the office, the work is delicate: the people in place may have served the family for decades. We step in to hold the role on an interim basis, work with the family on what the next chapter needs, and hold the difficult conversations with the people concerned, with the respect their loyalty deserves. Once a successor is chosen by the family, we manage the transition cleanly and step out.

Offices that grow without review end up paying for the structure of three years ago. We map what the family actually uses, what it has stopped using, and what it pays for anyway, then we help the family decide what to cut, what to keep, and what to rebuild. The result is an office sized for today's family, not yesterday's.

Generational transitions break under unspoken assumptions. We bring those onto the table, work with every generation to find the decisions that serve the whole family, and then we put those decisions in place, across the office, the structure, and the team. The family leaves the transition aligned, with an office that reflects the alignment.

When a new generation steps into the family office, the family's investments and capital allocation rarely reflect what they actually want to do with the family's wealth. We work alongside the family to articulate what they want, then complete the in-house team or bring in the right external providers to put the investment programme in place, so the whole family understands where it is invested, why, and can change direction whenever it chooses to.

Long-standing advisers rarely realise their time with the family has run its course, and the family is often too loyal to say so. We hold that conversation on the family's behalf, with respect for everything the relationship has been, and we manage the handover so the family ends with the right adviser for the next chapter, and the old one leaves with their dignity intact.