Hiring Senior Leadership to Scale a Multi-Family Office CFO Services Platform

This client is a leading independent multi-family office and RIA, which Barron’s and Forbes have recognized. The firm has more than 20 offices across the country and manages more than $70 billion in assets for ultra-high-net-worth families, founders, private equity principals and C-suite executives. The client’s model is built around delivering the investment management, wealth advisory and family office services that historically have been available only to the largest single-family offices, combining institutional-grade resources with the customization and speed of a dedicated private office. 

The engagement was centered around a senior leadership transition in the CFO Services & Bill Pay business line at the client, one of the firm’s most operationally complex and client-sensitive service lines. The new MD will be one of the firm’s most strategically important hires, taking P&L ownership of a function that includes high-touch bill payment, treasury management, bookkeeping, multi-entity consolidation, and outsourced CFO advisory for UHNW clients. From the outset, keeping the service running and safeguarding strong client relationships during the transition were top concerns.

The ideal candidate required a unique combination of skills: an accounting and finance background and direct experience in family office or private client work, the ability to build and grow high-touch financial operations teams, and the executive presence to represent the firm in client and prospect meetings. The entrepreneurial, fast-moving, client-first culture of the client added an extra dimension to an already exact brief – the successful candidate needed to come across as a credible client-facing leader as well as a capable operator.

The retained exclusive search was conducted to source senior wealth management and family office professionals with direct P&L and financial operations leadership experience. The assessment criteria were client-facing capability, financial acumen, team-building, scale-up track record, and cultural fit. A rigorous multi-stage evaluation process was put in place to ensure an extensive review of the candidate’s skills and how they fit into the client’s high-performance, client-first culture—critical in a search where the new leader would step into an active client portfolio and an established team. 

A managing director has been identified through a focused national search for the client’s CFO Services & Bill Pay platform. The required family office skills, operational experience, and client relationship abilities were present in the designated leader, and the engagement was successfully concluded. The process led to the search for a second senior hire at the firm.