"I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well. I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S. economy....I worry that we’re operating far beyond our economic knowledge. Every time the administration releases an initiative, I read 20 different economists with 20 different opinions. I worry that we lack the political structures to regain fiscal control. Deficits are exploding, and the president clearly wants to restrain them. But there’s no evidence that Democrats and Republicans in Congress have the courage or the mutual trust required to share the blame when taxes have to rise and benefits have to be cut.....I have to go to the keyboard each morning hoping Barack Obama is going to prove me wrong."
"Scanning the bookshelves of others is a favorite pastime, and sitting here canvassing my own makes me fully understand why Stout recently left his San Francisco house to move into a warehouse: he wanted to be surrounded by not just some but all of his books, to feel among the living. As one who has lugged an ever-increasing number of boxes of books from apartment to apartment, city to city, unable to part with nary a one, I feel the same way.
"Stout's presentation was so inspiring yet so bittersweet because his vocation seems entirely of an era that is passing us by. For centuries we've looked to libraries as historic evidence of cultured civilizations: will electronic texts fill that bill for future generations? While I'll admit that I'm intrigued by the Kindle, it will never replace the rows and stacks of books that crowd my house. And when I first settle into my comfy chair ready to read with that new device, I'll probably feel as if I had a phantom limb — I'll mourn the absence of my fingers slowly turning the pages."
·Membership services include educational webinars, conference calls, and other advisory services for family members and family office employees.
·THE clearinghouse for discreet and confidential communication and networking services between family office executives.
·Operates a confidential list-serve system to which family members and executives can pose anonymous questions ranging from international security protection services to the best restaurant in Dubai.
The common technological solution for family offices has been a general ledger, financial, tax, and/or investment reporting software solution.These systems are generally desktop or internal server based programs created to track and report data while offering limited cross-functional capabilities and even less in the way of strategic planning and communication.
Limited Ideas – Attempts at a Solution
·Rock IT - The Rockefeller family office built a proprietary system to integrate all of their reporting systems
oReporting is top-notch
oAntiquated customer-use system – all inputs must be submitted by telephone to a Rock IT rep, who then inputs the information into the Rock IT system
oPrice is extremely prohibitive, even for HNW clients
·Northern Rock - a well-regarded system at a respected price point
oSystem does not handle accounts with other custodians requiring all accounts to be housed at Northern Rock
§HNW clients generally have many different accounts and alternative investments with many different custodians
·Fidelity Family Office Services – attempting to the be the “white knight” of the industry
oAn attempt to consolidate all of the different Fidelity services and outside custodian accounts into one package
oAfter three arduous years and continuous delays, this has proved to be much more difficult than initially expected
Web 2.0 will likely create the largest security concern for family offices outside the protection of financial information.Twitter updates, Facebook profiles, and Flikr photos contain mountains of personal information, email addresses, photos of the family’s private aircraft, and location references that could be the nightmare of HNW families.Many children in these families have easily learned the benefits of the amassed wealth they enjoy but very few see the downside of “connecting with friends.”The security concerns engendered by Web 2.0 cannot be underestimated.
Family Office Cloud – THE BIG IDEA
·No one firm in the family office industry has over 4% market share in a market that is growing.
·The desire to build proprietary, internally-hosted or installed systems has been the innovation killer.
·Movement toward Cloud computing, collaboration, and Software as a Service (SaaS) is the direction the industry must turn.Integration of the current silos of information and adoption across custodians are major hurdles, but it can be done.
·Security and the protection of private and personal information is the major challenge
·Innovation of this kind could revolutionize the industry and eliminate the problems and limitations of the current, near-sighted technological solutions.
As we seek to find truth among the varying data points we encounter, we laugh, we think, and most importantly we listen - admitting that learning is a lifelong endeavor...sometimes you need to be a consonant and sometimes a vowel.
Brought to you by theYreport at y-report.com
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