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Managing wealth across generations involves a particular kind of complexity. As families grow, so do the number of entities, jurisdictions, and people involved in managing their assets. Investment structures become more intricate, responsibilities spread across family members, and the information needed to make decisions becomes harder to coordinate. Financial data often lives in one place and family governance in another.
Addepar has integrated with Trusted Family, a global governance platform working with approximately 220 families across 35 countries. The integration puts portfolio information and family governance side by side. During our recent webinar, Karel Tant, EMEA Head of GTM at Addepar, and Edouard Thijssen, co-founder of Trusted Family, explored how connecting these systems can help families manage complexity and make more informed decisions.
Here are four takeaways.
1. Wealth data and family governance belong in the same flow
For families managing portfolios across multiple entities, with allocations spanning both traditional and alternative assets, the governance context around investment decisions matters as much as the performance data itself. Boards of directors, investment committees, and family foundations all need access to financial data, but the way that data is leveraged depends on the governance context surrounding it. Yet the two often operate in separate systems.
“Addepar brings the unified wealth and Trusted Family brings the governance view,” says Tant. “We bring portfolio performance and family governance in one single flow of systems that are integrated.”
When portfolio data and governance context sit side by side, family members can review financial reporting alongside the materials that inform their decisions.
2. Different generations need different levels of engagement
Not every family member needs the same visibility, and controlling access can help streamline conversations and increase clarity. The family office team overseeing investment strategy day to day needs a different view from a beneficiary beginning to understand their family’s portfolio. “Instead of having lots of different platforms in which family members have to connect, now through the mobile app they’ll get a push notification and can receive the reports that are relevant to them in a secure way,” says Thijssen.
“Preparing and educating the next generation is a key thing that we work on with many of our clients,” he adds. “Making sure that they grow up as responsible family members and are equipped to make very important decisions is really critical.”
Giving younger family members access to relevant information, at a pace that matches their growing involvement, helps build the understanding they will need when those decisions fall to them.
3. Better reporting creates better conversations
For many family offices, quarterly reporting follows a familiar pattern: generate the reports, check the permissions, and distribute to the appropriate family members. Across multiple beneficiaries, each with different entity structures and access levels, that manual process takes up significant advisory time.
“We didn’t have a way to offer family members access to their wealth statements easily without manual work,” says Thijssen. “Since the integration, the family office team can connect to Addepar and push these reports automatically into the vaults we’ve set up.”
When distribution is handled, a quarterly statement becomes the starting point for more productive conversations. Family members can review their reports, capture questions, and arrive at the next discussion prepared.
4. Combined financial and governance data sets the stage for AI
The current integration focuses on report distribution, but both firms are exploring what comes next. In the nearer term, that could mean giving family members more dynamic, on-demand access to portfolio data alongside their governance materials.
The longer-term potential extends to AI. Family offices hold years of investment information alongside governance records and decisions. Connecting these sources could help families draw on their collective history when considering future allocations and strategy.
“If you combine all the family historical governance data together with all the investment and portfolio data and bring AI intelligence on top of that, I’m sure that in one year or two years’ time, what we show here will be very different,” says Thijssen.
As family wealth passes between generations, continuity depends on more than preserving assets. Families also need to preserve the information and context that allow successive generations to make informed decisions. Bringing financial reporting closer to family governance is a practical step towards that goal.