Welcome to Family Office by Artorius

Complexity of our lives and financial affairs

Ultra-High Net Worth (UHNW) individuals worry about the same things as everyone else; it is just that their challenges and opportunities are amplified by their wealth. They want to be responsible and to continue to be successful. And of course, they worry about the next generation; they don’t want their wealth to damage them or to be a burden. They understand that passing down the wealth is not as easy as it seems. Many such clients are first generation wealth creators and they are successful because of their raw talent, long hours, risk and personal sacrifice. They want to continue to invest and create wealth. And they also want time back to do what they do best and often, to make up for lost time

Why a Family Office?

Asset control: We often say that your success means that you have a balance sheet that resembles that of a sizable business; but you don’t have the infrastructure to manage it.

Continuity and Education: A family office is designed to promote family unity and education over time.

Objective decisions: It is difficult to do everything and have still have time – a family office provides professional support to decision-making. Conflicts are avoided and alignment sought.

Comprehensive service: A family office is built around the family, providing the functions and services that the family needs.

Financial strategy: A family office considers the impact of each financial decision on the family’s plans and strategic objectives.

The cost and complexity of your own family office

If you wanted to do it yourself, where do you start?

The challenge of creating your own family office start with a definition – what is it, exactly? Artorius are specialists in this area and we know from our own extensive research in the market that the answer from the professional community is often "Well, it depends..."

And if the answer to "what is a family office?" is "it depends" then the question of costs is almost out of the question.

The cost of a lawyer? The cost of an investment specialist? The cost of an accountant? The cost of support? The overhead cost of an office?

The answer is of course, significant.

Skills and Resources

And if the cost could be met, where would you find the people? As a client memorably said in an interview – "I am wealthy and my affairs are complex but even if I could find them, I am still not convinced what they would do all day, let alone what it would cost. I would just worry."

Artorius have worked hard to define and deliver a family office – we simply see it as an organisational structure with functions that we deliver resulting in 3 key outcomes amounting to great Family Governance. A family office should:

• Ensure decisions are made in the best interests of the family
• Empower decision makers
• Hold advisors to account

Skills and Resources

Family Office by Artorius is a service for High Net Worth families. Families who recognise that the standard services of most wealth managers focus on their investments and the investment performance rather than thinking about the family and their relationship with all of their the wealth. Artorius have both defined and then created an outsourced Family office service that focuses on what is truly important, not just the family's financial investments.

Oversight Function

Client Partner and team; dedicated wealth professionals with significant experience whose role is to be the family’s key point of contact, to manage the day to day family office activities, organise and deliver reporting, to work with advisors and institutions and to be the knowledge manager

Investment Function

A Client Partner and a team of highly skilled investment professionals with a wide range of skills – together they are akin to your own Chief Investment Officer (CIO). Providing a full range of tailored, bespoke investment services, they are impartial, delivering expertise, process and insight.

The Reporting Function

Managed by the Oversight Client Partner, reporting goes beyond investment performance; consolidated reporting is comprehensive insight into the family’s financial affairs. It is the basis for discussion, for strategy evolution and decision making

Advice

In simple terms advice is a recommendation which is a guide to handle a situation. Impartial ‘buy side’ advice is critical to the Family Office by Artorius proposition. Whether we are coordinating your team of advisors with our Oversight function , reporting on your overall wealth through the Reporting function or whether we are acting in the role of the Principal Advisor or Investment Advisor or Wealth Planning Advisor we bring together every element to ensure your family is properly advised day in, day out.

Reporting

Great advice is dependent on coherent and well-presented information. In wealth management where a number of strategies may be available, with risk of trade-offs between error and effort, basing decisions on effective information is critical. That is where our reporting function comes in, supporting oversight and advice. We provide truly holistic reports across the whole of our client’s wealth, not just the information that the institutions provide. From that, we provide bespoke information, for example, cashflow planning, risk assessments and so on.

A Link to a typical report is here.

Investment

Investment advice is at the heart of the value added by our Family Office service. We recognise the type of investment advice a family office provides. We see the difference between us and other investment managers as impartiality – we are not led by our own prejudices and we do not provide “sell side” advice, the typical approach of the financial services industry. Instead we deliver “buy side” advice aligning our interests with your family as we are your family office. In practice, this means the delivery of a wide range of value added services that are selected in association with our client, depending on need.

Planning

Wealth planning brings advice, oversight, reporting and investment advice together. When delivering our Family Office by Artorius service, the creation of a wealth plan - is the result of a number of different levels of advice. Whether it is the outcome of our role as Principal Advisor where we challenge and guide the family over the big issues, whether it is as Investment Advisor where we provide impartial advcie or whether it as Wealth Planning Advisor where we bring the advice and information together and consider tax, risk, structure and insurance, the Family’s wealth plan is the output and guide to our team.

Advisors

The role of Family office by Artorius is to help our clients manage the complexity of their lives and financial affairs more effectively. We don’t provide legal or tax advice, nor do we deliver accounting services and nor are we trustees. But we do know the issues. What we do is to become the central point of organisation and management for the family and we work with lawyers, tax advisors, accountants, and corporate trustees to ensure that the family gets the advice it needs. And yes we can recommend advisors where we need to .

Investment

The role of Family Office by Artorius is to help our clients manage their relationships with their investment managers. We align with the interests of our clients because we are impartial. We play their role of the own Chief Investment Officer, providing a full range of investment services that are tailored to the family investment needs. We are investment experts with hundreds of years of experience gained from working with banks and institutions. We know and understand the issues and how the institutions work. We are not the asset manager, we are not the bank and we don’t provide custody services. We work with asset managers, banks and custodians. And, yes we are able to recommend investment partners for the family.

Personal

The role of Family office by Artorius is to help our clients manage the complexity of their lives and financial affairs more effectively. We do provide Oversight and in doing so, we work with the family’s existing personal support and administration. We don’t provide concierge and “Private Office” services but we partner with – and where required recommend - those businesses that do.

We partner with

We work closely with the advisors and the institutions who work with our clients. One of the objectives of our Oversight function is to help our clients, advisors and institutions to work better together. We provide the central management and document retention. Our role is to give each party the information that they need to make the right decisions in the best interests of the family.

Right Price

Artorius understands that investment return depends on investment performance, the fiscal environment and of course, the fees that are charged. A key objective of a Family Office is to manage fees and ensure value for money. It is a challenge and requires experience and expertise; expertise that we have. We focus on total expenses and including a complete range of services within our Family Office proposition. Furthermore, we know what our clients should be charged for the services they receive and with our institutional knowledge, we ensure that they pay the right price.

Right Structure

Our skills go beyond the provision of in depth reporting, professional oversight and the application of impartial investment skills. We add value by asking the right questions and proposing better ways of doing things – for example, organising a refinance of a dollar exchange rate swap agreement to reflect the sterling currency of the client’s assets, saving significant cashflow and reducing cost; or explaining the concept of a Family Investment Company to better match our client’s approach to long term investment, enhancing governance and decreasing fiscal liabilities.

Buy Like An Institution

Artorius works with many of the major banking institutions, asset custodians and investment managers – it is a key part of our proposition. Furthermore, our close relationship with those organisations extends to the terms that we offer. In short, our scale and personal connections allow us to buy services like an institution. That means our pricing for our clients is demonstrably cost effective and delivers measurable value.

Holistically

For most wealth managers, the focus is investment and investment performance. For Artorius, the Family Office is there to facilitate; great family governance, the right decisions and empowerment of decision makers. Investment return is critical but so is the allocation, location, dispersion and application of wealth. We ask all of the right questions in getting to the right answer on a holistic basis.

Adding Value

What do we mean by adding value? We mean depth of knowledge about you and your family; we mean you working with the right people with the right skills and experience, we mean that we have the right methodologies; and of course, we mean that we add financial value in our relationships. We have many examples where we do just that.