A keyed-in family office makes sure all your experts are working together
By Whittier Trust
Most families with significant wealth don’t lack good advisors. They tend to have a roster that includes a detail-oriented CPA, a capable estate attorney, and a trusted investment manager. Each person is great at their job, and yet there can still be gaps. There may be overlapping investments no one notices, insurance that hasn’t kept pace with a growing collection of assets, or an estate plan that looks airtight on paper but breaks down in execution.
The missing piece usually isn’t expertise. It’s wealth management coordination.
“The family office is the glue that brings all of the different elements into one central strategy formation and implementation group,” says Whittier Trust Senior Vice President and Client Advisor Brian Bissell. “For ultra-high-net-worth families, a multi-family office like Whittier Trust can provide continuity through the generations.”
That’s the role of a financial quarterback: not another specialist on the field, but the one player who sees the whole game and who can execute the strategy behind generational wealth planning.
The Risk of Keeping It All in One Head
For many families, that coordination already exists, but it may exist in the wrong place. Matriarchs and patriarchs often spend decades playing quarterback themselves, holding the entire strategy together largely by themselves.
“A lot of patriarchs and matriarchs have assembled really good teams of independent advisors, and in their own heads, they’ve done a good job of being that connective glue,” Bissell explains. “But all of that information lives inside one person’s mind, and when something happens to that person, that becomes an issue.”
The 85-Year-Old Widow and the Hidden Risk
One client story captures why coordination matters more than any single decision. An 85-year-old widow came to Whittier Trust already working with several outside investment managers, each overseeing a different slice of her portfolio, independent of one another. “That lends itself to overlapping exposures,” Bissell says. “One group of managers could have owned shares of Apple, not knowing she also owned Apple with another manager, leaving her overexposed to risk.”
The bigger issue surfaced once Whittier looked at her entire balance sheet. She had $10 million at another firm, invested entirely in bonds. “If we had invested new cash in a vacuum, not knowing the whole balance sheet, her overall allocation could be 75% bonds, 25% stocks, leaving her portfolio woefully unbalanced for her stage of life,” Bissell says.
Whittier Trust took the opposite approach, investing roughly 90% of the new $10 million in stocks, which, taken alone, looked reckless. Once you factor in the bond-heavy account elsewhere, the picture flips: “Now, overall, she has a 50/50 allocation,” Bissell says.
The lesson wasn’t just technical. It was personal, too. Though the client lives in California, she was ardently opposed to having exposure in bonds related to the state’s government. Whittier Trust honored her wishes. “It’s not always just what’s the most tax efficient or what looks best on paper. We always prioritize what’s best for the client and what aligns with their values,” Bissell says.
Beyond Investments: Catching the Blind Spots
A financial quarterback’s job isn’t limited to portfolios. The same whole-picture view applies to making sure insurance coverage keeps pace with new acquisitions and changing lifestyles, from a growing art or car collection to appreciating real estate.
“Our client advisors get to know their clients well enough to know if their kids just got a trampoline for the front yard, and all the neighborhood children are coming over to jump on it, or when there is a new driver in the family,” Bissell says of a potential for increased liability. “So we ask: how much umbrella coverage do you have? Many clients may not even know what an umbrella policy is. So we shore that exposure up.” Because Whittier Trust earns no commissions on insurance placed through outside agents, the incentive stays aligned with the client, not the policy, sometimes resulting in less coverage, not more.
A Force Multiplier, Not a Rival
It would be easy to assume a family office competes with a client’s existing attorneys and CPAs. Bissell says the opposite is true. “We love working with our clients’ outside advisors and they love working with us. I feel like we make them look good when they refer their clients to us and visa-versa. We are able to keep our clients’ needs, goals, and objectives front and center with them so that no plan grows stale over time.”
The same is true for attorneys. Because of the family office’s deep understanding of the family’s goals and wishes, attorneys can more efficiently create a well-drafted plan that gets implemented just as it was intended. “It’s really a symbiotic relationship that’s better for everyone involved, from the family to the professionals they trust,” Bissell says.
The Bottom Line
None of these stories hinge on a single brilliant call. Instead, they hinge on someone staying close enough to the whole picture to notice when the pieces don’t fit together, and who can get the right people to collaborate before a gap becomes a problem.
That’s the job of a financial quarterback: not to replace the specialists on a family’s team, but to make sure they’re all playing the same game and that the game is chess instead of checkers. It’s proven to be a winning strategy.