Pick the wrong structure and you'll spend two years undoing the hiring, technology, and governance decisions that flowed from it. The single-family vs. multi-family decision is foundational, and yet most families approach it backward — they start with a prospective wealth manager's pitch and reverse-engineer the structure to fit.
Do it the other way. Decide the structure first. Then find the people.
Single-Family Office: What You Get
A single-family office is yours. The staff works only for you. The investment committee serves only you. The technology, the reporting, the concierge services, the governance support — all tailored to one family's preferences, risk tolerance, and long-term objectives. There are no other clients competing for attention.
Privacy is the other side of the same coin. The people inside your SFO know every detail of your financial life, and only the people inside your SFO. There is no aggregation of your data with other families' data. There are no internal memos that mention you alongside other clients. If discretion matters — and for most UHNW families it does — the SFO is hard to beat.
What an SFO actually costs
Industry benchmarking suggests most single-family offices run 50 to 150 basis points of assets under management in total annual cost. At $200 million in assets, that's $1–3 million a year. At $1 billion, expect $5–15 million. Below $100M, the per-dollar cost of an SFO is usually hard to justify against a well-run MFO relationship.
The cost structure is roughly half personnel, a quarter technology and infrastructure, and a quarter external professional fees. Personnel is where offices differentiate — a CIO who runs $500M in direct private investments is a different hire than a chief of staff who coordinates external wealth managers.
Multi-Family Office: What You Get
A multi-family office serves somewhere between 20 and 200 unrelated families. The infrastructure — the investment research team, the tax specialists, the reporting technology, the custodial relationships — is shared. You pay a fraction of what you'd pay standing it up yourself, and in exchange you share attention with other clients.
The MFO landscape splits roughly into two tiers. The institutional MFOs (Rockefeller Capital, Bessemer Trust, Pathstone, CPI, Northern Trust's wealth division) serve hundreds of families and have the scale to invest in research, technology, and talent that even $500M SFOs struggle to match. The boutique MFOs (think a 20-family shop with a principal who used to run an SFO) offer higher-touch relationships to a small client book but lean on external managers for investment research.
The Trade-Off in One Sentence
An SFO maximizes alignment and privacy. An MFO maximizes cost-efficiency and institutional infrastructure. Most families discover over time that they want pieces of both, and that's why we're seeing more hybrid structures — an SFO that outsources specific functions to an MFO, or an MFO relationship paired with a dedicated family chief of staff.
When the SFO Wins
- Net worth above $500M. Above this line, the cost of a dedicated SFO is rounding-error against the value of alignment and control.
- Operating business still in the family. If a family business needs governance integrated with wealth oversight, an SFO makes that integration possible.
- High privacy requirement. Public figures, political families, ultra-high-profile entrepreneurs — the SFO is often the only structure that satisfies genuine privacy needs.
- Complex international tax footprint. Multi-jurisdictional families often need internal staff who know the family's full picture to manage ongoing decisions.
- Direct investing as a strategic priority. If you want to source, diligence, and execute direct private deals, an in-house team is almost required.
When the MFO Wins
- Net worth $25M–$200M. This is the sweet spot. MFOs can deliver institutional-grade infrastructure at a cost SFOs can't match.
- Time constraints. Running an SFO is an ongoing governance burden. Families who want wealth management without a management job are better served at an MFO.
- Generational transition underway. MFOs can stabilize the financial life during succession, acting as an institutional anchor while family roles shift.
- First-generation wealth. Families who recently liquidated are often still in the "what do I do with this" phase. An MFO gives time to learn before committing to a dedicated structure.
The Virtual Middle Path
A virtual family office — a quarterback coordinating external specialists — can serve families in the $10M–$75M range who want coordinated expertise without MFO fees or SFO commitment. The VFO model has real risks (continuity if the quarterback leaves, lack of deep institutional reporting) but it has gotten much more viable as technology has improved the orchestration tooling.
Decision Framework
Map your family against three dimensions and the answer usually emerges:
- Scale. How much investable capital? Above $200M tilts SFO; below $100M tilts MFO.
- Complexity. How many moving parts — businesses, jurisdictions, generations, entities? High complexity tilts SFO.
- Appetite. How much bandwidth does the family have for governance, oversight, and direct involvement? High appetite tilts SFO.
If two of three tilt one way, that's your starting structure. Revisit in five years — the right structure at $150M is often wrong at $400M.
More on the services that sit inside each model: Family Office Services. For families leaning SFO, our How to Start a Family Office piece walks through the build sequence.