A study has shown that 90% of family wealth disappears after the third generation. Monica Espinosa, UBP’s Head of Family Office Solutions, and Pierre Ricq, Senior Family Advisor, have made it their mission to make sure this doesn’t happen to the families who approach them, by providing clarity, a long-term vision, emotional support, and access to a wealth of experts in institutional-level financial services.
Listen to the full interview on family offices on Spotify or Apple Podcast:
There are two sets of people with distinct attitudes to owning wealth – those who have inherited it and have a sense of responsibility to preserve it for the next generations, and those who have just made their fortune and want to explore their options. Obviously, nobody wants to lose their assets but how they deal with them will depend on their profile and their purposes.
UBP has a rather unique service, UBP Family Office Solutions, part of the Estate Planning & Family Wealth Solutions team, the essence of which is to help families with wealth set up a governance structure that will stand the test of time. UBP Family Office Solutions is a human-centric one-stop-shop spanning all the services a family could need in a combination of in-house expertise and input from trusted external providers.
Head of UBP Family Office Solutions Monica Espinosa and Senior Family Advisor Pierre Ricq spend a lot of time listening to the families they meet to understand their – sometimes conflicting – priorities. The first step is to establish how the clients see the purpose of their wealth – it might be philanthropy but sometimes it's more about succession, for example.
The key focus here is not the amount of assets but the size, complexity, and dynamics of the family. It takes time in deep and meaningful conversations and a long-term view to pick apart the differing views, aspirations, and concerns of the family members and find the way to reconcile them.
The Family Workshop
The UBP Family Office Solutions team have devised a programme in three steps. On the first day, they encourage the family to talk to each other as a group in search of their shared values, which will cement their relations; secondly they formulate the family’s mission and vision, putting them down on paper as a Family Charter; and only as a third step do they start talking about investment, creating an Investment Policy Statement with a Strategic Asset Allocation led by a Family Investment Committee.
‘I often say that we’re not so much consultants as project managers’, says Monica. ‘We’re not here to tell them what to do, we’re here to ask them the right questions so that they can find the solutions themselves. It adds legitimacy and makes them independent.’
It’s about people
The key stand-out factor in UBP Family Office Solutions’ offering is the high importance they give to the human connection between them and their clients, and between the members of the families they serve. As Monica says, AI has many uses but when it comes to helping families nurture their ties and unite around shared interests – a strong factor in preserving family wealth – human empathy is what is needed.
UBP Family Office Solutions have earned the trust of their clients, who value their input and keep coming back for follow-up and oversight of the solutions they have helped set up.
We are not a product, we are a toolbox for crafting your own solutions.
Monica Espinosa, Head of Family Office Solutions
