What Is a Single Family Office?

A single family office (SFO) is a private organization created by one family to manage its wealth, investments, and personal affairs. Unlike banks, wealth managers, or multi-family offices that serve many clients, a single family office serves exactly one family — which means its only agenda is that family’s interests. The Family Office Association (TFOA) has served the global single family office community as a private peer network since 2007.

What does a single family office do?

No two family offices look alike — as the saying goes, once you know one family office, you know only one family office. That said, most SFOs handle some combination of: investment management and direct investing; consolidated reporting across custodians and asset classes; tax and estate coordination; philanthropy; family governance and next-generation education; and household or lifestyle administration. The mix depends entirely on the family’s assets, complexity, and goals.

Single family office vs. multi-family office

A multi-family office (MFO) serves multiple families and is inherently a compromise: no single firm can be the best at everything, so families typically get either strong investment performance or strong family office services, but rarely both. An SFO trades higher fixed cost for total alignment, privacy, and control. Many families begin with an MFO or private bank and graduate to an SFO as wealth and complexity grow.

How do you set up a single family office?

Creating an SFO is a sequence of deliberate decisions rather than a single event. In practice the process covers: defining the mission — what the family actually wants the office to do; choosing scope — investments only, or the full range of family affairs; structure and domicile; hiring leadership the family trusts; technology, reporting and controls; and governance — decision rights, investment policy, and family councils. Most families take 12–24 months to move from decision to a fully operating office.

What does a single family office cost?

The industry rule of thumb puts annual operating costs at approximately 1% of assets under management, and a full-service single family office generally requires over $100 million in assets to justify its fixed costs — though lean, virtual family offices operate below that threshold with outsourced functions. The largest line items are people: an experienced CIO commands institutional compensation, and staffing choices drive most of the budget. Families weighing the build-vs-join decision often use peer networks like TFOA to benchmark real costs against other offices before committing.

Why peer networks matter

The hardest problems in running an SFO — compensation, deal flow, manager selection, succession — are exactly the ones no vendor can answer objectively. That is why principals join peer networks: to compare notes with people who have no product to sell. TFOA is a true peer network of single family offices: members meet monthly, share diligence and deal flow under a strict code of conduct, and gather annually at the Single Family Office Symposium. Membership is limited to qualifying single family offices.

Go deeper

Explore TFOA’s free library of 34 whitepapers on every aspect of family offices, the monthly Economic Updates, the family office glossary, and TFOA and Marc J. Sharpe in the press.