Ep 394: Launching An Administrative Family Office Practice To Deliver Your Best Support To (HNW) Clients with Christi Van Rite
Jul 16, 2024
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Christi Van Rite, founder of White River Consultants, shares insights on managing financial needs of high-dollar families, tech stack flexibility, referral pipelines, team training, and risks. She highlights services like personal bookkeeping, payroll, property management, and document management. The discussion covers transitioning from financial advisor to family office services, cybersecurity, client selection, defining success, and commitment to philanthropy.
Offering administrative family office services involves managing personal finances, payroll, property, and document management for high net worth clients.
Strategic team curation, risk management, and tailored client service are essential for success in the administrative family office niche.
High net worth families' intricate structures require expertise in navigating multiple trust accounts, inheritances, and specialized services to ensure privacy and efficiency.
Deep dives
Providing Specialized Family Office Services
Kristi Van Wright evolved her career from traditional financial advising to offering administrative family office services for ultra high net worth households. Her firm, White River Consultants, focuses on four primary pillars: bookkeeping, payroll for household employees, property management, and document management. Kristi ensures the meticulous handling of bills and household payroll, prioritizing cybersecurity and client privacy. By offering administrative services and tech ownership to clients, she emphasizes adaptability and client-focused solutions.
Onboarding and Managing Specialized Team Members
Kristi discusses curating a specialized team to manage the complex and sensitive needs of high net worth households. She emphasizes risk management by maintaining high cash reserves to handle any potential revenue losses from severed client relationships. Kristi's approach involves meticulously tracking team time to gauge capacity and ensure work complexity comprehension. By avoiding traditional investment management and focusing on administrative services, Kristi advocates for a fulfilling career path in the industry.
Tailoring Services to High Net Worth Clients
Kristi's services cater primarily to entrepreneurs and serial business owners seeking streamlined solutions for their complex financial lives. She details her pricing structure, which ranges from $5,000 to $8,000 per month, with adjustments based on individual client needs. Kristi's approach accounts for varying client requirements, offering a bespoke approach to administrative family office services. Her firm's adaptable retainer model and personalized onboarding processes highlight the commitment to efficient and tailored client service.
Factors Influencing Engagement with High Net Worth Families
The engagement with high net worth families is influenced by the complexity of the structure they have built around them. It is not solely determined by the asset level but by factors like multiple trust accounts, multi-generational inheritances, property management, and busy schedules that necessitate specialized services. High-value families with intricate structures require expertise to manage various services efficiently and flexibly, ensuring privacy and tailored solutions.
Evolution and Challenges of Building a Specialized Family Office Service
The evolution of a specialized family office service involves strategically structuring a team with bookkeepers, project managers, and data entry personnel. The need for specialized skills and attention to detail in managing family balances, bill payments, and project relationships forms the core of the service. Challenges include staffing ratios based on client complexity, revenue fluctuations, and a focus on providing unconflicted advice and custom-tailored services for high net worth families.
Christi Van Rite is the Founder of White River Consultants, a firm that provides administrative family office services to 17 ultra-high-net-worth households. Christi, whose firm is on track to generate nearly $1.5M in revenue this year, offers her insights into the complexities of managing extensive personal finances. You'll learn about the four primary pillars of Christi's services—personal bookkeeping, payroll for household employees, property management, and information and document management—and how each of these plays a role in maintaining financial order and security.
Join us as we delve into Christi's journey from a traditional financial advisor to a leader in administrative family office services. You'll hear about her strategies for managing the financial needs of complex client households, the importance of using a client-owned tech stack for flexibility, and the role of robust referral pipelines in growing her business. Christi also shares her approach to curating, onboarding, and training specialized team members, managing risks associated with serving high-dollar families, and why she believes this niche is a fulfilling career path for financial advisors.