Choosing Advisers for a Family Office: CPAs, Attorneys, Bankers

The coordination problem

A family with meaningful assets usually works with several professionals: a CPA, one or more attorneys, a banker or two, insurance advisers and investment managers. Each is expert in a part of the picture, and each sees only that part. The tax plan, the legal structure and the investment strategy can quietly disagree with one another, and no single adviser is responsible for noticing. One of the main jobs of a single-family office is to choose those advisers well and to keep them working from the same facts.

What to look for

A CPA who fits the complexity. A family with several entities, real estate and operating businesses needs an accountant experienced in partnership and business returns, not only individual ones. Look for someone who plans during the year rather than only preparing returns after it, and who will explain the reasoning behind a recommendation in plain language.

The right attorney for each job. Estate planning, transactions, real estate and disputes are different specialties. A trusted generalist who knows the family is valuable as a first call, but complex matters deserve a specialist, and the two should talk to each other.

Bankers who will still be there in a bad year. A banking relationship is tested when credit is tight. Ask how the bank has treated long-standing clients in past downturns, who will make lending decisions, and how responsive the team is to routine requests such as wires, account changes and treasury services.

Clarity about duties. Advisers owe clients different legal duties. Registered investment advisers owe a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940; broker-dealers making recommendations to retail customers are held to the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest. Neither is automatically better, but the family should know which standard applies to each relationship and how each adviser is paid.

Questions worth asking before engaging anyone

Who will actually do the work? The senior person in the first meeting is not always the person who handles the file.

How do you charge, and how are you otherwise compensated? Hourly, fixed fee, a percentage of assets, commissions or referral arrangements all create different incentives.

What are your conflicts? A good adviser will name them without being asked twice.

What happens if you leave? Continuity matters for a family that thinks in decades. Know who else at the firm knows the family’s affairs.

Can we speak to clients like us? References from families or businesses of similar complexity are more useful than general testimonials.

Keeping them coordinated

The family office is the hub. It holds the single set of facts, including the entity register, the monthly close and the key documents, and shares what each adviser needs, current and consistent.

Put the scope in writing. Engagement letters should say who is responsible for what: which returns each firm files, who tracks entity annual reports, who monitors loan covenants and insurance renewals. Gaps between advisers are where deadlines are missed.

Keep one calendar. Tax deadlines and extensions, entity filings, renewals and loan maturities belong on one schedule that the office owns, not scattered across several firms’ systems.

Meet together at least once a year. A planning session with the CPA, the estate attorney and the family office in the same room surfaces conflicts that separate meetings never would. Ask each adviser to put significant recommendations in writing, including what the others will need to do.

Reviewing the bench

Long relationships are an asset; advisers who know a family’s history give better advice. That is not a reason to stop reviewing them. Once a year, the office should ask whether each adviser is still the right fit for the family’s current complexity, and whether service has slipped. Changing advisers is disruptive, so it should be rare, but deliberate. The aim, as in the rest of our approach, is a small number of strong, lasting relationships built on shared facts.