Both coordinate a family’s wealth. One is an organisation the family owns; the other is a service it buys. How to decide which one your family needs.
Once a family’s affairs outgrow a single private bank, the conversation usually turns to a family office. The question is rarely whether the family needs coordination; it is whether that coordination should sit in an office the family owns and staffs itself, or be bought from a multi-family office that serves several families at once. The two models solve the same problem in very different ways, and the right answer depends less on the size of the balance sheet than on what the family actually needs the office to do, and for how many generations.
A family office is the organisation that sits above the family’s advisers and holds the whole picture together. In practice its work falls into a few areas:
Few families need all of this at once. The mix they do need is the best guide to which model fits.
A single-family office (SFO) is owned and controlled by one family and serves only that family. Its defining feature is control: the family chooses the people, sets the priorities, owns the data and decides how conflicts are handled. It can be built around the family’s specific situation, whether that is a concentrated stake in an operating business, a large direct-investment programme or a complex cross-border footprint.
The trade-offs are cost, recruitment and key-person risk. An SFO is a small business with fixed costs: salaries, systems, premises, compliance and outside counsel, all payable whether markets are good or bad. It has to attract and keep capable people, and a small team can depend heavily on one or two individuals. When a trusted chief investment officer or family office head leaves, continuity can suffer.
Regulation also matters. In the United States, the SEC family office rule (17 CFR 275.202(a)(11)(G)-1) lets a family office fall outside the Investment Advisers Act if it meets three conditions: it has no clients other than “family clients”, it is wholly owned by family clients and exclusively controlled by family members or family entities, and it does not hold itself out to the public as an investment adviser. “Family clients” can include family members, certain key employees, and trusts, estates and charitable entities connected to the family. An office that starts taking on unrelated families no longer fits that definition.
In Singapore, a revised framework for single-family offices took effect on 15 June 2026. As announced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, it provides “a straight through class exemption from licensing for all qualifying SFOs”, which need to notify MAS, maintain an account with a MAS-licensed bank and file an annual return; existing SFOs have until 15 June 2027 to comply. Singapore’s fund tax incentive schemes for family offices carry their own conditions. According to MAS’s published conditions, the Section 13O and 13OA schemes require at least S$20 million in designated investments and two qualifying investment professionals, and Section 13U requires S$50 million and three, in each case with at least one who is not a family member, plus minimum local business spending. Rules like these shape where and how an SFO is set up, so they belong in the design conversation from the start, not after the entity exists.
A multi-family office (MFO) provides family-office services to several unrelated families. Some began as a single family’s office that opened its doors to others; others were built as independent firms from the outset, and some are owned by banks or larger financial groups.
The advantages are mostly those of shared scale. A family gains a team with broader skills than it could justify hiring alone, established reporting systems, and experience drawn from many families’ situations. Costs are variable rather than fixed, and continuity does not rest on one employee. For a family that wants coordination and oversight but not a new organisation to manage, that is often the more sensible route.
The trade-offs are control, attention and conflicts. The family is one client among several, and the office’s priorities and staffing are set by its owners, not by the family. Because an MFO serves the public, it is normally a regulated adviser in its home jurisdiction, which gives clients some protection but also means its own business model matters. Ask how it is paid and who owns it. An MFO paid only by its clients has different incentives from one that earns revenue from products it places or from a parent bank.
Many families end up in between: a very small in-house team, sometimes a single trusted executive, that owns the strategy and the relationships, while reporting, administration or investment execution are outsourced to an MFO, private banks or specialist providers. This keeps control of the decisions that matter while avoiding the cost of building everything. It also leaves room to grow into a fuller SFO later, or to scale back if the family’s needs change.
Whichever model the family chooses, the office is only as good as the governance around it. Clear decision rights, a written investment policy, regular reporting to the wider family and an agreed plan for succession matter more than the legal form. Our note on choosing a wealth manager above $10 million sets out how to evaluate the firms a family office will oversee, and our comparisons of J.P. Morgan and UBS and J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs cover the questions to ask the banks themselves.
A single-family office is owned and controlled by one family and serves only that family. A multi-family office provides similar services to several unrelated families and is usually a regulated firm with its own owners.
There is no official threshold. The practical test is whether the family’s needs justify the fixed cost of staff, systems and compliance compared with what a multi-family office would charge. Specific regimes can set their own minimums; Singapore’s Section 13O and 13U fund tax schemes, for example, require S$20 million and S$50 million in designated investments respectively.
Not if it meets the SEC’s family office rule: it serves only family clients, is wholly owned by family clients and controlled by family members or family entities, and does not hold itself out to the public as an investment adviser. A multi-family office serving unrelated families does not qualify and is normally a registered adviser.
Yes, and many do. The multi-family office often oversees and reports across several banks and managers, while the banks provide custody, lending and investment products.
This article is general information. It is not financial, legal or tax advice, and not a recommendation to establish any particular structure. Regulatory and tax rules for family offices differ by country and change over time; the regulatory points above reflect the cited official sources as of September 2026. Take advice from qualified legal and tax professionals in each relevant jurisdiction before acting.