Survey says: When clients call, who picks up the phone?

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Wealthy families with top-tier family offices expect to get what they pay for: access to a range of services offered by leading experts all under one roof. Yet this easy-to-understand class of holistic planning can lead to complexity when clients call or shoot off a text about, say, tax strategies, illiquid assets or scoring a personal invitation to buy the latest LaFerrari. (One doesn’t just simply purchase one – there are rules, you know.)

Who should respond when clients reach out with questions? The leading partner? A junior associate who passes along the message to the relevant team? Surely not an answering service that places a client on hold.

While each family office has its own procedures and protocol for maintaining communication with families, all agree on one thing: Choosing a primary contact is about finding someone the client trusts.

Martha Simmons, chief operating officer, Forthlane Partners, Toronto

“Our mantra is, ‘We always want to be your first phone call.’ Then we can point clients in the right direction or give them advice on what to do.

“In terms of who they call, each client is given two relationship managers who are key people at Forthlane. Clients have access to our entire team, but for simplicity’s sake, they can reach out to the two people by phone, email or text and ask about anything that’s bothering them at that very moment, whether it’s financial or personal.

“We have a very small and very senior team. We don’t have juniors working with clients, so it’s very different from some of the large family offices or banks with a hierarchy, and people feel that if they’re not speaking to a certain senior person, they’re not getting the best. All of us are very senior in our individual roles, and the clients become very close to us. We really get to know them deeply from every angle of their lives – so they similarly get to know us. We pick their relationship manager based on their individual needs, personalities, interests and the services we think they want.

“Just to give an example, I have a PhD in dispute resolution and I’m a lawyer. If there’s a family who is experiencing challenges in governance or family dynamics, I would be a really good relationship manager for them. Then if we anticipate they’ll need to pull a lot of money out here and there, we’ll put a second person on who’s an investment core person.

“We’re very strategic about how we decide who the relationship managers are. And they are typically for the whole family. Because family systems are so intertwined, it’s helpful to have the same relationship managers who understand all the complex moving parts.”

Shannon Walters, director, family office, KPMG in Canada, Vancouver

“It depends on the family. Who is the family member most comfortable speaking with first? It’s usually the first person they’ve been introduced to who brought them into the family office team environment. But that can shift over time. You have the main relationship lead, but there can also be other people the client will automatically call based on their needs.

“The benefit of having a family office, or multi-family office, is an integrated wealth strategy. You usually have a team of experts, administrators and different layers of advisory people coming together to help the client.

“So it’s interesting to say, ‘Who is actually maintaining that relationship? Who is the client going to?’ If you really take a look at who’s going to do that, there are certain attributes a person has to have. They should be able to build a rapport with the family and be a good communicator, connecting team members with the family and blending them together in a nice way.

“Whether they’re an admin assistant, a partner or a wealth strategist, they have to understand the big picture – what’s happening in the client’s life, how it relates to their financial service needs. It’s a big-picture approach.

“Then they have to build trust with the client. I’ll underscore that a few times. We can assign whoever we want to a particular client, but they’re not going to call that person unless there’s a trusted relationship and they feel they’re going to be heard, understood and get whatever they need.

“The family office contact also has to show empathy. It’s important to understand what a client is going through and what’s behind their questions. If someone is upset, calling and asking for very direct data, you need to be able to read between the lines a little more and figure out why they’re asking. Maybe there’s more to it. You’ll need to know what it is to connect them with the right person.

“It’s really important to have a strong team that works together well and is organized. We can’t always predict what that next phone call will be, but we can predict how we will handle it.”

Sloan Levett, partner and practice lead, family office group, Fuller Landau LLP, Toronto

“We’re a boutique family office with a smaller team of six people, so the person who has gained the client’s trust is the one who gets the call. I started the relationship with most of these clients, and there’s a certain level of trust and a deeper comfort level there. Although I’m working hard to elevate some of my senior people, I’ll still get most of the calls.

“But a couple of the people below me are starting to get them when it’s a question with a black and white answer. It could be a tax question. Or they say, ‘I’m curious about whether I can claim medical expenses and how much.’

“But where there’s grey, the call is going to me. Clients ask, ‘We want to be more philanthropic and set up some sort of foundation or donor advised fund. Can you walk me through it?’ Or, ‘Sloan, I have a really good friend who pitched me on a business proposition and I don’t know what to do. Can you insert yourself to be the good or bad cop and help me navigate it?’

“How do you build that sort of trust? Competently answer the black and white questions, and then the relationship develops. We’re trying to develop two people at the senior level in our practice. “From a succession perspective, I know they’re doing a great job when I notice I’ve moved from an email’s “to” line to the “cc” line. Then I’m completely off the email.

“But it depends on the family, too, which frustrates some people below me. They say, ‘I was working so flipping hard to build this relationship and you get the fun calls!’ I tell them, ‘Listen, I’ve known this family for 15 years. Put yourself in their shoes. As great as a junior is, they still want to have that security blanket, that person they’ve built such trust with.’

“I suspect there will be some clients who will just never want to move off me because why should they? They’re paying and this is what they want. We will work with that.”

Responses have been edited and condensed.

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• How to equip kids with healthy attitude toward money, a step-by-step guide
• For business owners passing baton to their kids, stars don’t often align
• Hiring the right kind of savvy can maximize sale of a business
• What better expert in family offices than someone who custom-designs them?

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