You may be asking:
How do I create a family office…and do I even need one?
Creating a family office sounds like something reserved for billion-dollar families, but the reality is more nuanced. The purpose of a family office isn’t excess; it’s organization. It’s about bringing all the moving parts of your financial life—investments, taxes, estate planning, philanthropy, and household management—under one cohesive structure.
According to Select Advisors Institute, a management consulting and coordination firm that specializes in helping affluent families build or streamline their financial infrastructure, the first step isn’t about hiring staff. It’s about defining the system.
Q: What is a family office?
A family office is a private structure and set-up that centralizes management of a family’s financial and personal affairs. Traditionally, the term has been applied to families with $100 million+ in assets, but modern, fractional models, like those at Select Advisors Institute, now allow families at much lower levels to experience similar benefits - organization, coordination and project management - without the overhead.
Select Advisors Institute describes it best: “A family office isn’t defined by staff size - it’s defined by coordination.”
Q: How do I start building a family office?
Step 1: Define Your Objectives
Decide the purpose behind your family office. Is it wealth preservation, tax efficiency, succession planning, philanthropy, or simplifying daily life? The answer drives everything that follows.
Step 2: Assess Scale and Feasibility
A traditional family office can cost several million dollars per year to operate. Families under $50–100 million often begin with a fractional family office model, engaging a coordination partner like Select Advisors Institute to manage structure and communication without full-time staffing.
Step 3: Determine the Right Structure
Single Family Office (SFO): Built solely for one family—complete control, high cost.
Multi-Family Office (MFO): Shared infrastructure across families—efficient but less personalized.
Fractional Family Office Coordination: A hybrid model managed externally by a coordination partner, designed for families who want the function without the payroll.
Q: What should the business plan include?
Your family office business plan should establish:
Mission Statement: The family’s long-term purpose.
Governance Structure: Who makes decisions, how, and when.
Budget: Setup and ongoing costs.
Roles and Responsibilities: Which duties are internal, which are outsourced.
Select Advisors Institute helps families craft these frameworks, ensuring every task has an owner and every advisor knows where they fit.
Q: Who are the key people in a family office?
Traditional offices employ a Managing Director, CFO, investment officers, accountants, attorneys, and admin support. But fractional models outsource these functions. Select Advisors Institute often serves as the executive coordinator—the link connecting your CPA, tax strategist, attorney, financial advisor, and household vendors so no decision or deliverable falls through the cracks.
Q: What about legal and compliance setup?
You’ll need to:
Form an entity (LLC, trust, or corporation)
Establish compliance and reporting procedures
Draft investment and governance policies
Set risk and cybersecurity protocols
SAI’s coordination model ensures that the right professionals—legal, accounting, tax—stay aligned, while SAI manages the flow of information, documentation, and follow-ups.
Q: What technology and systems should a modern family office use?
Today’s family offices rely on secure digital platforms for:
Consolidated reporting and performance dashboards
Document storage and encrypted communication
Task and project tracking
Select Advisors Institute helps families implement technology appropriate to their scale—centralized enough for efficiency, but simple enough to actually use.
Q: How are ongoing operations managed?
Whether traditional or fractional, every family office needs structured workflows for:
Investment reviews
Bill pay and cash-flow management
Tax coordination
Reporting and advisor meetings
Charitable giving or foundation activity
Select Advisors Institute’s fractional model handles coordination of these workflows through recurring check-ins, written recaps, and centralized tracking—ensuring that ideas and advice turn into completed actions.
Q: How does a fractional family office engagement work?
Rather than establishing a family office, handling costs, overhead and expenses, you can consider hiring a fractional family office that can build your full team. Select Advisors Institute can serve as your fractional family office, with Amy Parvaneh serving as your family office president.
Q: What are the ongoing benefits?
Clarity: Every advisor knows what’s been done and what’s next.
Continuity: No more dropped tasks between professionals.
Privacy: Sensitive data stays consolidated, not scattered across inboxes.
Peace of Mind: You manage direction; SAI manages execution.
Q: How is family office different from wealth management?
Traditional wealth management focuses on investments, financial planning and tax planning. Those are all great; but at the end of the day, managing complex wealth comes with a litany of administrative, talent management, education and coordination that wealth management firms simply won’t be able or allowed to be involved in.
A family office, even fractional, manages everything around your various vendors and advisors.
Select Advisors Institute works alongside your existing advisors - not in place of them - to ensure every recommendation connects across the ecosystem.
Q: When should a family consider upgrading to a family office from wealth management?
You may be happy with your existing advisors. However, they each have a “day job” and managing the administrative complexity, lifestyle needs, and coordination on a daily basis isn’t on that job description.
If you feel that while being happy with your advisors you are constantly juggling multiple financial and wealth management tasks, serving as the coordinator and communicator, it may be time to consider building out your own family office.
Creating a family office is about control and clarity. For families under $100 million, a fractional coordination model offers the sophistication of a full family office without the fixed infrastructure.
Select Advisors Institute acts as your executive coordination partner—aligning your advisors, managing communication, tracking every deliverable, and ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks.
The result: the organization and peace of mind of a traditional family office—delivered with the flexibility and cost efficiency that modern families prefer.
About Select Advisors Institute
Select Advisors Institute is a management consulting and coordination firm helping affluent families organize their financial lives through structured communication, advisor alignment, and project management. The firm does not provide tax, legal, or investment advice; instead, it ensures that all those professionals operate seamlessly together to deliver clarity, consistency, and confidence.
To learn more, visit www.selectadvisorsinstitute.com/family-office.
Learn how to create a family office - or use a fractional model - with Select Advisors Institute, aligning advisors, organization, and long-term family goals. Learn about the difference between a family office and wealth management.