Why talent attraction and retention are key to family office growth and success
The growth of family offices in the past five years is driving an increase in demand for investment and management staff according to the KPMG Global Family Office Compensation Benchmark Report 2023.
KPMG has seen a boom in family offices moving and setting up in Asian financial hubs, particularly in Singapore over the past year. This trend has been focussed on inbound entities from China and as well as other parts of the globe.
“We are seeing more families recognise the benefits of setting up a family office in Asia to help them professionally manage their wealth. Benefitting from the government policies, well established financial market, and talent pool, Hong Kong (SAR) and Singapore have become very popular jurisdictions as a family office base,” said Karmen Yeung of KPMG Private Enterprise, KPMG China.
Karmen said that apart from wealth management and philanthropic activities, it is also common to see older families that have transitioned their wealth for more than two generations engage family office professionals to execute wealth succession plan and next generation development.
“As awareness of family offices as a sector increases, so too does the competition for talent,” said Robyn Langsford, Global Head of Family Business. Across the globe, the survey showed 40% of family offices are looking to hire staff in 2023 and 33% of family office professionals will be looking for a new role this year.
“Family offices are increasingly shaping themselves with a corporate-style structure reflected in their approaches to investment, succession planning, governance – and recruitment,” she said. “A common question for us is, ‘What should I pay my CEO?’”
Robyn said people are being attracted to the family offices sector by its less bureaucratic processes or the opportunity to generate financial returns they can share in by way of access to long-term Incentives, such as carried interests.
Based on the number of employees at those family offices responding to the survey, the family office sector employs anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people in Australia - well over double the number of family office employees ten years ago.
“With increased mobility comes heightened pressure to provide a compelling reward package with a value proposition for staff that includes cultural alignment and the capacity for flexible working. These are not issues that only affect family offices, but they are symptomatic of the change in the profile of family offices as professionalised institutions capable of offering career pathways and growth,” said Robyn.
This makes it an increasingly attractive to professionals with candidates from inside the financial services industry, such as ex-private bankers or former investment analysts.
The survey also highlights the growing importance of the concept of ‘how, where and when I work’ to all talent as a precursor to their engagement with family offices. So too is the relationship of the employer to the individual’s own values and sense of social responsibility.
“The rise in the influence of impact investment and belief in the importance of how capital is utilised was a theme that ran through our survey of family offices in 2021, where 70% of respondents had either invested in or were conscious of developing an investment strategy around impact. It is a sentiment that is shared by many employees,” she said.
The Global Family Office Compensation Benchmark Report developed in collaboration with Agreus Group features quantitative and qualitative insights into family office composition and compensation structures and provides much sought-after benchmark data.
The report features qualitative data gathered from 625 Single Family Office professionals across the world ranging from personal assistants to CEOs to chairpersons, as well as 25 interviews from family office leaders. This is referenced against primary data collected by Agreus Group over a 13-year period, including insights from 1,500 Family Offices globally.
