How Family Offices Can Build Their Family Office Network in the New Year

A Short List of Family Office Networking and Educational Resources

As family offices and financial institutions conduct their annual planning, they're setting the stage to help their high-net-worth clients reach their stated goals. In fact, many firms may even reference our year-end checklist to help with internal and client-focused planning for the coming year.

Now with those planning initiatives in motion, we recommend taking some time to focus on expanding your professional network and identifying educational tools and resources outside of your firm’s four walls.

Why do we think this is important?

For family office professionals and private wealth advisors, a strong professional network and an abundance of educational resources helps you gain a broader perspective as you work towards improving your family office services and growing your relationships amongst the family members.

Below is a short list of resources to help you build out your family office network.

Family Office Focused Conferences

For most family offices, confidentiality and prudence are cornerstones of their practices. Family office conferences give family office professionals and advisors to HNW individuals and families the opportunity to connect with one another in a private environment. While some conferences have a specific focus like family office technology or tax and estate planning, other conferences stack their agendas with a variety of topics. Overall, many family office focused conferences offer continuing professional education (CPE) credits to help attendees reach their CPE credit requirements.

Depending on your goals and objectives, pick conferences that can help you solve specific problems like finding the right family office technology platform, planning for a transition of wealth or learning about new investment approaches among UHNW investors. Additionally, keep an eye out for conferences that lean into more notional topics like family member education, executive compensation and generational leadership.

Bonus: Attending these types of conferences poses a great opportunity to network with other family office professionals, discuss common pain points and learn from other individuals in your role. Talk about their family office technology solutions, what they like and don’t like about them. Seek recommendations for outside professionals like attorneys, caregivers and insurance specialists. Debate the merits of family office ownership structures and certain investment types.

These kinds of conferences open up a creative avenue that can be inspirational – and, in some cases, even transformational – for your family office. Plus, there is something to be said about the human-to-human interaction when you’re at the epicenter of like-minds where you can learn from industry experts, discuss best practices and dissect industry trends.

Family Office User Groups and Conferences

Family office technology user conferences are one-of-a-kind events specifically designed to help you succeed. Ranging from product-specific training led by subject matter experts to sessions on industry trends led by outside speakers, these types of meetings – often referred to as user conferences or client conferences – are designed to help you connect with other family offices who are using the same solutions as you.

For instance, our firm hosts biennial user conferences that bring together family offices from across the globe to learn more about the Archway Platform^SM. From how to design a better client reporting experience to how to become more efficient while performing daily tasks in the software, the Archway user conference is designed to spark discussion, innovation and the always sought after “aha” moment. Beyond the opportunity to receive face-to-face product training and education, the Archway user conference also offers an abundance of networking opportunities including roundtable discussions, cocktail receptions and group excursions so that our family office clients can get to know their family office peers. Over the years, many of our clients have joined forces to form their own regional family office networking groups as a result of meeting at the Archway user conference.

Have we caught your attention? We talk more about ongoing product education in our 3 TIPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR FINTECH INVESTMENT post.

Family Office Membership Organizations

Beyond attending industry and vendor conferences throughout the year, exploring membership-based communities provides another avenue for you to connect with family office peers and organizations as well as access collective industry intelligence, news and trends. From private online discussion boards, exclusive research reports and industry-specific news articles to in-depth family office workshops and trainings, family office membership organizations give your firm a 360-degree view of the family office’s role in the broader wealth management industry.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, this all sounds great, but how do you figure out which organizations and conferences are a good fit for family offices?

Below is a short list of family office organizations that we know to offer conferences and networking opportunities:

• Campden Wealth (Institute for Private Investors (IPI)) is a membership network of private investors focused on providing knowledge and intelligence to ultra-high-net-worth families and enterprises. Through a variety of events, publications and research initiatives, Campden Wealth (IPI) offers its large community of peers access to relevant industry news, insights and trends.
• Family Office Association is a global membership organization for UHNW families offering a variety of private events, global summits, literature, video content and podcasts.
• Family Office Exchange has been a leader in the family office community for more than 30 years and offers a membership-based family office community that features vast networking opportunities, diverse learning programs and detailed family office research and insights. Not a member? Check out their public resources including key findings from FOX surveys and insights from FOX publications.
• Family Wealth Alliance has been a member of the family office community for 15 years and works with a wide network of family wealth firms including single and multi-family offices, OCIOs and law and accounting firms that work with HNW families. They offer a variety of ways to get involved including events, literary content, webinars and their application-required membership.
• Family Wealth Report delivers daily business intelligence specific to North American family wealth. Through easy-to-consume news stories and research articles, Family Wealth Report keeps its large subscriber base in tune with the broader family wealth industry. They also host the notable Family Wealth Report Awards and an annual Fintech Summit for family offices and HNW wealth managers.
• Lido Consulting specializes in educational and professional networking events for the family office industry through a series symposiums, luncheons, networking receptions and other events throughout the year.

We acknowledge that our list represents only some of the largest family office organizations, but we encourage you to network with your peers and family office service providers to learn about their experiences with large family office organizations and the many self-sustained regional family office groups that are out there at your disposal.

Wondering where the SEI Family Office Services team will be this year? Check out our current list of conferences and events that we will be attending, sponsoring or speaking at this year.

Originally published Jan 28, 2020, updated Sept 1 2022