The relationship between a Family Office and their Trust Provider is unique. It is a mutually beneficial relationship that exists to both protect Family Offices and facilitate their growth. It is also both personal and professional as while Trustees may visit and interact with the family to deal with personal matters, as Family Offices grow to become international conglomerates with increasingly complex fiduciary needs, the Corporate Services side of these organisations becomes invaluable.

Trust and Corporate Services Professionals go beyond a nice-to-have offering. They are an essential requirement for efficient and effective growth within Family Offices and in the last 12 months, driven by the Archegos Scandal, they have become the most in-demand type of Family Office professional.

In fact, according to an Agreus survey, in-house Trust, Legal and Compliance professionals have seen a 200% increase in demand for their services with Family Offices seeking help to deal with impending regulations and ongoing professionalism.

In the last year, Family Offices have required Legal Counsel to professionalise and move towards transparency in a post-Archegos era while looking to Compliance Managers; both internally and externally, to safeguard against impending regulation particularly in the USA.

With regulation still on the agenda, what does 2023 have in store?

While the Family Office and Trust spaces have always been treated as siloed communities, they couldn’t operate without one another and we think in 2023, there will be a formal recognition of this. Family Office Compensation Structures such as long-term incentive plans will stop applying solely to investment, finance and operational staff in the Family Office and begin to be offered to in-house Trust professionals in a bid to retain them as critical hires.

The demand we have seen for Trust professionals following the pandemic, Archegos scandal and Brexit has been monumental. Family Office priorities have shifted from pure-play investment to realising the importance of things like regulation, reputation management and compliance and the knock-on effect we have seen in hiring has been really quite interesting. Family Offices have spent the last 18 months doing all they can to attract talent and as a result, international Trust and Corporate services firms are battling with Family Offices to not just attract but retain the very best Trust hires.

While battling to attract talent, external Trust firms are realising the potential of in-house Trust hires within the Family Office space with eyes on the inside and outside and equally, Family Offices are beginning to realise the benefit of having resources internally and externally too. As a result of both of these factors, in 2023 in-house Trust professionals will become as commonplace as investment teams and looking to the outside, Trust and Corporate services firms will start advocating the hiring of an in-house professional to offer an ‘inside’ pair of eyes to help with continual compliance.

While ESG will continue to sit on Family Office agendas and we do not expect to see much movement here, the principles of ESG will seep into other areas of Family Office business with Principals relying on Trust professionals to perform greater due diligence across all of their investments. This will come in the form of on-the-ground surveillance, reputation management and generally a greater interest in ensuring the people and places being invested in are careful investments.

2023 will see Family Offices hire more Trust professionals than ever before and as a result, we anticipate a great interest in the amount of Trust professionals seeking a move in-house with a Family Office to make a greater impact on a larger scale.

Do you agree with our predictions for the Trust space?