Full Service Integrated Planning Throughout your Lifetime and Across Generations
Wealthy families like the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers realized long ago that their affairs were complex and they needed more than casual help from their accountants or lawyers. They needed full-time personnel who knew tax planning, investment management, alternative investments and estate planning; they needed budgeting, bookkeeping, accounting and tax compliance, as well as insurance services, property management and advice on how to manage their businesses and plan for their children and grandchildren. And they needed professionals to help them prepare the next generations for the responsibility of stewarding their wealth. They established permanent “family offices” and hired professionals to look after all their financial management. Kerr Family Office provides the highest level of in-depth personalized financial services to our most successful Canadian families, owning all of your family priorities and deadlines with you, maintaining all of your records and taking care of needs of all of your family members.
Full Service Family Wealth Management
The objective of our Full Service Family Office Wealth Management is to help you understand and maximize the true value of your family, being the sum of its human, social and intellectual capital facilitated by your financial capital. We do this by maximizing your financial resources through integrated planning; providing peace of mind that financial opportunities and priorities are being taken care of; helping you to articulate your family values in order to create the best financial and non-financial legacy for the next generation. Your family can rely on a dedicated team of multi-disciplinary professionals led by a Family Office Partner ensuring continuity of service. We follow our proprietary Kerr Family Office Process which at its core, is guided by a detailed understanding and articulation of your families’ goals and values.
The Family Office service starts with getting to know you and your family. We begin our discovery process by asking questions about your primary issues and concerns; by meeting with you and your extended family; by listening carefully and learning as much as we can about you and your family. From this in-depth learning and analysis we articulate your family goals; we clarify your family resources and align on your objectives; all of which allows us to advise you in the most meaningful and personal way.
From the wealth creators to the wealth inheritors each generation grew up under different circumstances, which shape family members’ perspectives on life and values. Articulating the values most important to your family is what brings your family together across generations. Values provide a framework for each family member to act in any given situation, and a system of shared values is often what drives the success of family businesses and offices. Without commonality in values succession planning, budgeting, investing and family direction are difficult. With our experience we can guide you through this process and help you to confirm your family’s values, instilling them in the work we do and helping you to communicate them across generations. This is a particularly valuable process in the work we do with families around their philanthropic planning.
With our deep level of technical expertise through our diversified professionally designated team, we are able to integrate our services to ensure that your strategies combine to complement and enhance each other’s effectiveness. We have extensive experience advising clients on advanced strategies including the use of holding companies and trusts, business succession, and investment planning and portfolio management through our wholly owned subsidiary, Kerr Financial Advisors Inc., a registered investment management firm. Our comprehensive integrated planning includes family risk management, succession and estate planning, tax planning, education funding, strategic family philanthropy and considering optimal ownership, tax and income structures.
Our Family Office Investment Planning & Management process starts with development of a strategic Investment Policy for your family's assets. We set out an asset allocation plan incorporating a wide range of securities including alternative asset classes. We then select the best specialty managers to implement the policy, incorporating an institutional due diligence process to select and monitor the managers and with special attention to managers that pair well together to optimize risk adjusted returns. We consolidate feeds from the many custodial platforms involved in order to give you a consolidated overview of the family's portfolio. Within your strategic framework, shifts and tilts as deemed necessary or opportunistic are introduced as market conditions or changes in your goals and needs are identified. We also ensure the overall portfolio is tax effectively managed through wise asset location choices as well as attention to where and when taxable income is realized.
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In order to grow and preserve family wealth for multiple generations, families needs to develop effective ways to make decisions together and they need to prepare the next generation to manage the family wealth. Depending on the family's situation and objectives, we can develop a program of family meetings to share information and decisions and we can help assess and address educational needs for younger members of the family to ensure they have the financial literacy necessary to act as financial stewards.
An important part of our service is ensuring that your family stays on top of all priorities, that deadlines are met and that you are taking advantage of all new opportunities as they arise. To do this, we develop an Annual Calendar for your family that tracks all of your deadlines and builds in regular meetings. At the outset of each year we review your family's strategic objectives for the year and risk areas to be addressed and we keep these top of mind in our regular meetings. And we take care of all of your ongoing compliance and administration needs from our internal teams, which ensures that we monitor the effectiveness of all strategies on an ongoing basis.
Two of the most important assets for a family are your relationships and experiences with each other and your connection with the community (what is sometimes referred to as Human Capital and Social Capital). When families have been fortunate to build wealth, they often find it rewarding to focus on the purpose of the wealth, including how they can give back to their communities - and enrich their own experiences by doing so. Our experience with families in this regard, and with our own charitable giving and community involvement, allows us to help your family make informed decisions when it comes to giving. Depending on your goals and objectives we can work with you to set up a charitable foundation, or a planned giving strategy that is aligned with your family's values and is tax effective.
- How can my family benefit from the Kerr Family Office model
- Access to a personalized dedicated team of multi-disciplinary professionals
- Objective financial advice and access to all investment managers (not pre conceived solutions)
- Confidentiality and discretion
- Administration of family financial affairs made easy from one location, including storage of confidential documents
- Integration of tax, investment and estate planning strategies to optimize family results
- Peace of mind that all compliance needs are taken care of and opportunities are not being missed
- Access to best practices based on our experience with other successful families like yours
- Experience and sensitivity to ways families can truly sustain their wealth (family education, governance, succession planning, articulation of values and helping you consider the purpose of the family wealth)
- Are all Family Office Services provided the same?
No. Family offices are all very different and customized to each family’s unique situation. The services are personalized based on the family’s objectives and needs in order to provide services and education which meet the family’s long term values, goals and objectives. Kerr Family Office services are customized during the Family Discovery Process and updated regularly to meet the diverse needs of the families we serve.
- Who needs a Family Office?
Today, more and more successful families are being overwhelmed by the sheer extent and complexity of their financial lives. The more complex your financial situation, the more you may need the services of a family office. Where you are selling a business and are faced with complicated decisions regarding tax, legal and financial management, a family office could handle these issues. If you are looking to build generational continuity using family trusts, philanthropy and estate planning, a family office would allow you to address all those challenges and more. The Kerr Family Office concept is the ideal solution for obtaining complete financial management from a highly qualified dedicated team of professionals.
- What is a Family Office?
A family office is a dedicated multi disciplinary team of professionals who look after your family’s complex financial and human capital needs. The family office oversees and manages all of your financial affairs and maintains all of your financial information and records. It provides customized services to several generations of your family and works to support the family to sustain and grow family wealth.
