Relative gains

The growing number of multi-family offices in Asia are offering wealthy individuals a bespoke alternative to their ever-evolving needs, at a time when the traditional private bank model has come under criticism for being too product driven and impersonal.

Multi-family offices, or MFOs, are independent organisations that help multiple families manage their entire wealth.

Though there are no official figures on the number of multi-family offices in Asia, Sebastian Dovey, managing partner at Scorpio Partnership puts the number of established MFOs at between 25 and 40 each in Hong Kong and Singapore.

"Clients are attracted to the MFO business model because of their typically private ownership model. They also like the fact that they can delegate some of the management responsibilities to a focused group of market professionals working for a limited number of clients, as opposed to being one of many thousands of clients in a bigger firm, and they like the idea of employing a gatekeeper that can provide an interface between them and the complexities of the financial markets," said Dovey.

Where MFOs are really expected to compete is in their role as quasi-watchdog and aggregator of the entire portfolio. "This adds real value and is clearly distinctive from what a private bank employee can often struggle to do in terms of considering the entire wealth of the client across multiple banks," Dovey added.

"Asian families have rarely consolidated their assets across different banks in the past. It is important for them to look at the whole picture," said Urs Brutsch, managing partner at HP Wealth Management, a MFO in Singapore.