Family offices professionalise

# Family offices professionalise India’s richest business families are changing who runs their money. Instead of relying on relatives, long-time aides, or trusted insiders, more next-generation heirs are hiring professional chief investment officers, tax advisers, governance specialists, and outside consultants to run family offices with the discipline of an institution rather than the informality of a household desk. (economictimes.com) That shift is happening at the same time as India’s family-office industry is getting much bigger. EY and Julius Baer say the number of family offices in India rose from 45 in 2018 to about 300 in 2024, a jump that reflects both rising private wealth and a broader move toward formal structures for managing it. (ey.com) (juliusbaer.com) A family office is the private control room for a wealthy family’s financial life. It can oversee public-market portfolios, private equity deals, venture capital bets, tax planning, philanthropy, succession, legal structures, reporting, and sometimes even household administration, which means the job quickly becomes too complex for one loyal insider with a spreadsheet. (ey.com) The pressure is rising because the money itself is changing shape. India is expected to see about US$1.3 trillion to US$1.5 trillion of intergenerational wealth transfer over the next decade, according to Julius Baer and EY, and that kind of handover forces families to think less about preserving a founder’s instincts and more about building systems that can survive children, cousins, trusts, and cross-border assets. (juliusbaer.com) (ey.com) That is where professionalisation comes in. In practice, it means replacing ad hoc decision-making with investment committees, regular reporting, documented mandates, risk controls, tax coordination, and clearer lines between what belongs to the family, what belongs to the operating business, and what belongs to outside advisers. (ey.com) (juliusbaer.com) The next generation has strong reasons to prefer that model. Many heirs are less interested in spending their careers inside a factory, trading company, or legacy industrial business and more interested in capital allocation, private markets, technology investing, global diversification, and impact themes, which makes the family office feel less like a back office and more like an in-house investment firm. (economictimes.com) (ey.com) The portfolios are also becoming harder to manage casually. EY says family offices in India are moving beyond wealth preservation into strategic diversification and venture growth, while Fortune India’s summary of the EY-Julius Baer report says allocations are increasingly moving into global equities, real estate, private equity, venture capital, and other alternatives. A setup built for fixed deposits and domestic shares is not enough for that mix. (ey.com) (fortuneindia.com) Cross-border investing adds another layer of complexity. As wealthy Indian families diversify abroad, they have to deal with remittance rules, foreign tax exposure, entity structures, compliance, and reporting across jurisdictions, which is one reason outside specialists in tax and legal coordination are becoming more valuable. (fortuneindia.com) (ey.com) Governance is another driver. Julius Baer says 25% of families cite preserving asset value as a motivation for setting up a family office, 13% cite strengthening governance, and 12% cite preparing the next generation. Those numbers suggest that the family office is no longer just a place to park money; it is becoming a structure for preventing disputes, organizing succession, and setting rules before a crisis forces the issue. (juliusbaer.com) There is still a lot of unfinished work. Julius Baer says 41% of families have not formalised succession plans, while Fortune India reports that 59% have wills or constitutions in place and 19% use structures such as trusts or limited liability partnerships, leaving a meaningful share without a comprehensive framework. That gap creates demand for advisers who can turn wealth into process. (juliusbaer.com) (fortuneindia.com) The winners from this shift are not only the families themselves. Independent wealth advisers, multi-family offices, accountants, lawyers, reporting-software providers, tax planners, and outsourced chief investment office firms all stand to benefit as families decide they do not need to build every capability in-house. EY describes the emerging model as one that blends internal control with external expertise, especially as operations become more intricate. (ey.com 1) (ey.com 2) This change also says something larger about Indian capitalism. For decades, prestige sat with operating businesses: the plant, the brand, the distribution network, the family name over the gate. Now, for some heirs, prestige is shifting toward being a sophisticated allocator of capital, with the family office acting more like a private investment platform than a bookkeeping unit. (economictimes.com) The result is a more institutional version of inherited wealth. As Indian family offices grow in number, size, and complexity, the families that once depended on trust and proximity are increasingly paying for process, documentation, specialist judgment, and independent oversight. In other words, the family office is starting to look less like an extension of the founder’s room and more like a firm. (ey.com) (juliusbaer.com)