How Financial Advisers Can Deliver a True Family Office Experience
The family office model is no longer just for the ultra-wealthy. To keep up with clients' changing demands, advisory firms will need to ensure they have the talent and the tech to offer holistic wealth management that encompasses investment, tax and estate planning.
Today's clients no longer want piecemeal financial help. They want a family office experience, even if they're not ultra-wealthy.
That means receiving investment guidance, tax filing and planning and estate planning all in one place. The old model of an adviser building a 60/40 portfolio or a CPA filing a return once a year no longer meets expectations.
Clients increasingly expect integrated investment, tax and estate planning support as part of holistic wealth management.
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The technology options of the past — single-purpose, siloed solutions — do not deliver on this need. Tax software that doesn't integrate with financial plans or estate planning tools that operate in isolation only add friction and duplication of work.
Investments in tech and talent
Forward-thinking wealth management firms are investing in talent and technology to meet these demands. At the same time, CPAs are reshaping their roles by becoming financial advisers, affiliating tightly with advisers or being acquired outright.
While the largest CPA-affiliated wealth firms now oversee hundreds of billions in assets under management (AUM), the more telling trend is the rapid growth of integrated advisory models in which tax and wealth services are converging to meet client demand for year-round guidance.
Estate planning is evolving in the same way. Once a service reserved for ultra-high-net-worth families, estate planning access has been democratized by platforms such as Trust & Will, Vanilla and Wealth.com, which are using technology to rapidly build and update planning frameworks and documents.
Advisers understand the stakes: If clients need to go elsewhere for estate planning, the entire relationship is at risk.
With trillions set to transfer between generations over the coming decades, firms that integrate estate planning will be positioned to retain both assets and trust.
What advisers can do to keep up
For advisers, this shift means rethinking what "comprehensive" really looks like.
It's no longer enough to simply add services; data integration between these offerings is required to deliver truly holistic guidance.
Advisory firms need to start by mapping where their clients' financial, tax and estate data currently reside and then identify and address the friction points between systems and providers.
Building integrations between technology solutions enables important data sharing between tools and teams by allowing information to flow seamlessly between investment, tax and estate planning systems.
In fact, many advisers are embedding tax and estate planning platforms directly into onboarding workflows and client portals so that they become part of ongoing financial advisory conversations.
Even firms not equipped to hire in-house tax professionals and estate planners can integrate with these solutions to deliver tax and estate services that feel frictionless to clients.
Tech requirements
To truly deliver on the family office model, the adviser technology stack of the future must:
- Enable seamless data flow between financial plans, tax returns and estate documents
- Facilitate collaboration between clients, financial advisers, tax professionals and estate planners in one integrated environment
- Provide proactive insights, using automation and AI, to anticipate client needs and optimize decisions in real time
The most innovative firms have already recognized this shift and are moving quickly to make it real.
They are investing in building technology infrastructure that allows shared data without sacrificing privacy and building teams in which tax, legal and financial professionals work in coordination with one another.
Indeed, as technology and talent continue to converge, the family office experience will no longer be a privilege of the ultra-wealthy; it will become the new standard for comprehensive wealth management.
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