One Search Results in Two Executive Hires at a Leading Multi-Family Office

The firm is an independent, nationally ranked multi-family office and registered investment advisor with over 20 offices across the US. The only clients it serves are ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families. Its model is based on a simple premise: those families should have access to the same investment strategy, advisory talent, and operational depth as the largest single-family offices the world has to offer.

Its CFO Services practice is at the heart of that operational promise. The team offers outsourced financial management, treasury, reporting, and bill-pay to client families and functions as a dedicated service with its own P&L and a senior leader responsible for quality standards, team development, and direction of the practice.

The Head of CFO Services is one of the firm’s most important appointments. The families the practice assists have exceptionally complex financial structures, including multi-entity holdings across private investments, real estate, and liquid portfolios. They demand the same degree of precision and confidentiality from their outsourced CFO team as they would from a dedicated single-family office. The search was conducted in complete confidence, given that this was a sensitive leadership transition in a function where the continuity of client relationships was key.

The incoming Head would lead the practice, build the team, and uphold the precision such client relationships require. The role needed someone with experience in this environment, real UHNWI advisory experience, depth in CFO services and bill-pay, and the leadership profile to run a P&L at a nationally recognized firm.

The search spanned family office, private wealth advisory, and Big Four advisory markets. The Big Four was included for the range of outsourced-CFO and bill-pay expertise it produces: professionals who have built careers designing and executing financial management structures for principal families within major advisory firms. The engagement was entirely off-market and handled with the discretion that a sensitive leadership transition in this type of practice demands.

The quality of the candidates that Keller Executive Search presented meant that the firm could deliver an outcome beyond its original brief, two senior appointments from one engagement.

The Head of CFO Services had spent his entire career in UHNWI family office and private wealth advisory. He had led a Finance-as-a-Service practice at a large national advisory firm and, prior to that, developed outsourced CFO, treasury, and investment oversight structures for a family office managing more than $15 billion in assets.

The second appointment was a Senior Relationship Manager with a similarly specific background. After having built a single-family office from the ground up, he spent the next several years managing a concentrated portfolio of UHNWI client relationships at the level of wealth and complexity the firm’s clients represent.