Family Office Services
Building a legacy for generations.
We understand that a legacy is about more than wealth. It is about family, purpose, unity, and a better future. Partner with us to build and preserve your family’s legacy for generations to come.
Who we are
We are an award-winning fiduciary business that provides bespoke family office services. We work directly with individual families, as well as with large international single-family and multi-family offices, providing fiduciary, administration, governance, and philanthropy solutions. When you partner with us, you will benefit from the services of our expert team, who have years of experience working with families across generations. We provide a consolidated, coordinated, and collaborative service, freeing you and your family to focus on what really matters to you.
Our Services
We support families and family offices by establishing complex fiduciary structures that form an integral part of each family’s estate and succession plan. Just as every family is unique, every structure we create is customised to cater for your family’s specific needs and circumstances.
While each family is different, there remains a thread of commonality in the needs, desires, fears, and risks that you and your family members may encounter at various points in your lives. By leveraging our decades of fiduciary experience working with families with similar profiles, we provide solutions to meet these common challenges.
We establish and manage a variety of structures, including:
- Private Trust Companies
- Discretionary Trusts
- Reserved Powers Trusts
- Life Interest Trusts
- Charitable Trusts
- Non-Charitable Purpose Trusts
- Employee Benefit Trusts
- Foundations
- Charitable Foundations
- Holding Companies
- Family Investment Companies
- Limited Partnerships
- Jersey Private Funds
- Jersey Property Unit Trusts (JPUT)
Administration
Standard Bank has been providing fiduciary services for over 100 years. On a daily basis, our professionally qualified international teams, who are based in Jersey and Mauritius, provide fiduciary and administration services to families with a global footprint in terms of residence, assets and lifestyle.
The fiduciary structures of the families we serve are complex, bespoke, and often have sophisticated cross-border investments, including private company shares, large property portfolios, directly-held private equity, and investment portfolios with third party institutions. We can administer these assets whether they are held in personal names, in entities managed by family members or a family office, or in entities that we administer.
We provide a comprehensive asset administration service, including bookkeeping and accounting, treasury services, and tax compliance services. We also provide a central depository service for your family documents, as well as know-your-client and anti-money laundering documents, simplifying the processes for your family and reducing privacy risks.
The assets we administer are diverse, and include:
- Investment portfolios
- Residential property
- Commercial property
- Development projects
- Private company shares
- Directly held private equity
- Venture capital
- Luxury assets
Family Governance
Family governance is about bringing families together around their shared values and principles, establishing effective communication, and ensuring that their wealth provides a legacy and has a positive impact for future generations.
An effective family governance framework will look different for each family, but it should always bring harmony, ease the transition of wealth between generations, and preserve your family’s legacy. Family governance is particularly important in the context of a family business, to align the family on the business purpose and growth, succession, and benefit.
Together with our select network of expert legal advisors, we assist with the implementation of your family governance framework. We take on a role akin to that of a family secretary, providing support in ensuring that your governance framework is followed and that it remains relevant as your family evolves.
Your family governance framework could be structured in various ways, and may include:
- Family Meetings
- Family Charter or Constitution
- Family Policies
- Family Council
Philanthropy
Philanthropy enables families to make a change for good, and bring different generations together behind a shared goal. We have seen families use philanthropic structures to not only support causes they feel strongly about, but also to educate younger generations about their core values, the value of money, and how it can be used to support causes and communities.
While individual branches of a family may already be engaged in philanthropic activities, becoming organised as a family and jointly working towards a shared philanthropic strategy, based on agreed principles and values, can very much unite a family.
No matter what your family’s philanthropic goals may be, we can enable you to achieve them. Together with expert advisors, we will assist you with forming and implementing a philanthropic strategy, create philanthropic structures, and provide management, administration, and governance services to ensure that your philanthropic objectives are met.
Standard Bank takes social responsibility seriously, and as a fiduciary service provider, we are privileged to be involved with two ground-breaking initiatives: MycoHab and the The African Women Impact Fund Foundation (AWIFF). You can read more about Standard Bank’s impact work here.
Partner services
We work with a diverse and extensive network of trusted advisors and partners to offer a coordinated and cohesive service to your family, consolidating your needs through a single office. We ensure that we work with the right partner according to your family’s specific requirements and circumstances, and we work with top providers across the industry on a daily basis.
Our partner services include:
- Legal services
- Tax advisory and compliance services
- Accounting services
- Succession and wealth transfer planning
- Family business advisory
- Risk advisory and management services
- Property services
- Luxury asset services
- Investment services, including outsourced Chief Investment Officer services
-
Who we are
-
Our Services
-
Administration
-
Family Governance
-
Philanthropy
-
Partner services
We are an award-winning fiduciary business that provides bespoke family office services. We work directly with individual families, as well as with large international single-family and multi-family offices, providing fiduciary, administration, governance, and philanthropy solutions. When you partner with us, you will benefit from the services of our expert team, who have years of experience working with families across generations. We provide a consolidated, coordinated, and collaborative service, freeing you and your family to focus on what really matters to you.
We support families and family offices by establishing complex fiduciary structures that form an integral part of each family’s estate and succession plan. Just as every family is unique, every structure we create is customised to cater for your family’s specific needs and circumstances.
While each family is different, there remains a thread of commonality in the needs, desires, fears, and risks that you and your family members may encounter at various points in your lives. By leveraging our decades of fiduciary experience working with families with similar profiles, we provide solutions to meet these common challenges.
We establish and manage a variety of structures, including:
- Private Trust Companies
- Discretionary Trusts
- Reserved Powers Trusts
- Life Interest Trusts
- Charitable Trusts
- Non-Charitable Purpose Trusts
- Employee Benefit Trusts
- Foundations
- Charitable Foundations
- Holding Companies
- Family Investment Companies
- Limited Partnerships
- Jersey Private Funds
- Jersey Property Unit Trusts (JPUT)
Standard Bank has been providing fiduciary services for over 100 years. On a daily basis, our professionally qualified international teams, who are based in Jersey and Mauritius, provide fiduciary and administration services to families with a global footprint in terms of residence, assets and lifestyle.
The fiduciary structures of the families we serve are complex, bespoke, and often have sophisticated cross-border investments, including private company shares, large property portfolios, directly-held private equity, and investment portfolios with third party institutions. We can administer these assets whether they are held in personal names, in entities managed by family members or a family office, or in entities that we administer.
We provide a comprehensive asset administration service, including bookkeeping and accounting, treasury services, and tax compliance services. We also provide a central depository service for your family documents, as well as know-your-client and anti-money laundering documents, simplifying the processes for your family and reducing privacy risks.
The assets we administer are diverse, and include:
- Investment portfolios
- Residential property
- Commercial property
- Development projects
- Private company shares
- Directly held private equity
- Venture capital
- Luxury assets
Family governance is about bringing families together around their shared values and principles, establishing effective communication, and ensuring that their wealth provides a legacy and has a positive impact for future generations.
An effective family governance framework will look different for each family, but it should always bring harmony, ease the transition of wealth between generations, and preserve your family’s legacy. Family governance is particularly important in the context of a family business, to align the family on the business purpose and growth, succession, and benefit.
Together with our select network of expert legal advisors, we assist with the implementation of your family governance framework. We take on a role akin to that of a family secretary, providing support in ensuring that your governance framework is followed and that it remains relevant as your family evolves.
Your family governance framework could be structured in various ways, and may include:
- Family Meetings
- Family Charter or Constitution
- Family Policies
- Family Council
Philanthropy enables families to make a change for good, and bring different generations together behind a shared goal. We have seen families use philanthropic structures to not only support causes they feel strongly about, but also to educate younger generations about their core values, the value of money, and how it can be used to support causes and communities.
While individual branches of a family may already be engaged in philanthropic activities, becoming organised as a family and jointly working towards a shared philanthropic strategy, based on agreed principles and values, can very much unite a family.
No matter what your family’s philanthropic goals may be, we can enable you to achieve them. Together with expert advisors, we will assist you with forming and implementing a philanthropic strategy, create philanthropic structures, and provide management, administration, and governance services to ensure that your philanthropic objectives are met.
Standard Bank takes social responsibility seriously, and as a fiduciary service provider, we are privileged to be involved with two ground-breaking initiatives: MycoHab and the The African Women Impact Fund Foundation (AWIFF). You can read more about Standard Bank’s impact work here.
We work with a diverse and extensive network of trusted advisors and partners to offer a coordinated and cohesive service to your family, consolidating your needs through a single office. We ensure that we work with the right partner according to your family’s specific requirements and circumstances, and we work with top providers across the industry on a daily basis.
Our partner services include:
- Legal services
- Tax advisory and compliance services
- Accounting services
- Succession and wealth transfer planning
- Family business advisory
- Risk advisory and management services
- Property services
- Luxury asset services
- Investment services, including outsourced Chief Investment Officer services
Why do families use a family office?
Significant wealth creates both challenges and opportunities for families. While some families have enjoyed their wealth for generations, others have been building it over decades. For some, the realisation of their wealth may have been even more sudden, perhaps through a liquidity event such as the sale of a family business. While the catalyst for starting a family office may depend on the manner in which the wealth was created, the reasons for seeking a family office are often the same.
The primary reason for setting up a family office, whether it is a single-family office or making use of a trust company’s family office services, is to consolidate the oversight, administration, and management of your family’s wealth and affairs. In a world that is changing and becoming ever more complex, families are now more geographically dispersed than ever before. Assets are expansive across jurisdictions and sophistication levels, and regulation has increased exponentially. Against this backdrop, consolidating the administration of your family’s diverse assets and interests with an experienced team of professionals just makes sense.
A family office can provide the coordinated and collaborative approach that your family needs: bringing together the right service providers and professionals across the industry to cohesively manage and preserve wealth, meet your family’s diverse needs, and build an enduring legacy for future generations to enjoy.
When do families need a family office?
The manner in which wealth has been created often determines a family’s catalyst for establishing a family office. For instance, families with long established wealth may find that their wealth has grown to a point where they are managing multiple professional relationships, with advisors across jurisdictions and specialisms, as well as investment portfolios with a range of assets located across the globe. The family may also have grown over time to include several generations and family units, raising challenges on aligning and managing their different interests.
Other families may have built their wealth incrementally through a family business. Their business might have grown significantly, requiring more of their time and focus, while their personal wealth may have also grown in size and diversity. Where the family business and personal wealth are interweaved, the need may arise to separate out the personal wealth and entrust it to a dedicated team, freeing up the family to focus on their business.
Lastly, we often see the need for a family office arise in the wake of a significant liquidity event. When a family has invested their time and energy in building a family business that has grown exponentially, the sale of that business can be a life-changing event. The family might move from moderate to significant wealth almost overnight. While this can be overwhelming, it is also an exciting time, with new opportunities arising that may not have been previously possible. A family office can help a family put in place a structure to preserve their wealth while continuing to build their legacy.
Frequently asked questions
What is a family office?
The term ‘family office’ means different things to different people. While some families choose to create a single-family office, which is solely dedicated to their own family, there are those who choose to use the services of a multi-family office, which is used by more than one family. Others choose to use the family office services of a larger service provider like Standard Bank, as this not only gives the family access to dedicated, industry-leading professionals, but ensures that they benefit from the consolidation of their wealth management and administration.
As your family’s wealth grows and evolves, and the complexities of life mount, there may come a time when you wish to entrust the consolidation, management and administration of your wealth to a dedicated and professional family office. Each variation has its own advantages and disadvantages, and the right option will very much depend on your family’s particular situation and needs.
What is a single-family office?
A single-family office may range from having an individual acting as a single point of contact between your family and your fiduciary provider, banking and investment partners, to a formal, structured business consisting of legal, accounting, investments, administration, and governance professionals.
A single-family office usually consists of a bespoke team established solely to look after your family’s interests. Often, a single-family office will partner with a fiduciary provider, such as Standard Bank, who will provide the required fiduciary solutions to hold your family’s assets. The single-family office will invest the assets in the whole of the market and will also work closely with the different generations and branches of your family.
Standard Bank works with several large international single-family offices in a fiduciary and a banking capacity, offering streamlined solutions such as fiduciary structures, banking, lending, and investments solutions for the structures. We also provide banking solutions for individual family members resident across multiple jurisdictions.
What is a multi-family office?
A multi-family office is considered an ideal way to utilise family office services without having to incur the significant expense of establishing and maintaining a single-family office. Multi-family offices can take various forms, one of which is a smaller office that has spun out of a larger organisation, with a single large client, which then leverages the initial outlay to offer its services to a wider group of client families.
Alternatively, family office services are offered by institutions such as Standard Bank. Partnering with us gives your family the opportunity to benefit in a number of key areas, including:
- data storage and security
- IT spend and systems
- risk and compliance framework
- strong governance framework
- balance sheet strength and long-term stability
- indemnity insurance
- established service lines
- a significant reduction in the expenses incurred in hiring industry leaders to service your requirements.
Standard Bank’s services also include providing international banking solutions, the discretionary management of assets, access to credit facilities, and structuring assets through fiduciary structures. Any services not provided in-house are sourced from expert firms, such as niche asset management and tax advisors.
How does Standard Bank invest family office assets?
We value a trustee's impartiality, its fiduciary responsibility to beneficiaries, and the fact that each family is unique in so many ways.
We understand that some families may wish for a single solution, using only Standard Bank’s investment management services, and some may prefer to use Standard Bank only for its fiduciary expertise. On this basis, we use the whole of market when investing assets held through our fiduciary structures. It is important that these investment decisions are made free of conflict and that any investment solution selected is in the best interests of the beneficiaries.
As a trustee, we sit down with our beneficiaries to ascertain their income and capital requirements, understand their cultural and ethical profiles, their risk appetite, any tax constraints, and ultimately, the profile of the professionals they wish for us to appoint to make the day-to-day investment decisions in relation to trust assets.
Once this is understood, we will 'go to market', and approach known managers who are considered specialists in the identified strategy, or, if the assets are large in value and multiple strategies are being run, then we will make use of investment consultants or an outsourced chief investment officer to select the managers to invest the assets.
How does Standard Bank interact with families or family offices?
Family offices and family governance can take many different forms, and we offer the flexibility to tailor our services around your family’s needs and existing structure. Whether your family follows an informal approach, or is organised more formally into a family assembly and family council, we take the time to understand your family’s dynamics, existing advisory relationships and framework to ensure that we collaborate with all of the relevant role players. Our team follows a relational and responsive approach, forming close relationships across multiple generations of the families we serve.
We also offer
Private client services
We implement bespoke succession plans for families to leave a lasting legacy through flexible fiduciary structures. Whether through a trust, private trust company, foundation or holding company, we can support your family’s unique needs.
Corporate services
Together with trusted advisors, we develop, implement and manage vehicles to support your corporate strategy. Whether you are looking to expand your business into new markets or invest back into your home market, we can help you achieve your strategic goals.