The Critical Hires Every Newly Founded Family Office Should Make

Establishing a Family Office is an exciting milestone, but it can also be a complex one. Despite the rapid global growth of Family Offices, many founders begin this journey without a clear roadmap-particularly around which roles to prioritise in the earliest stages.

As a specialist recruitment and consulting partner to Family Offices worldwide, Agreus sees firsthand that the success of any Family Office ultimately comes down to its people. The right early hires shape governance, streamline operations, and build lasting trust from day one. This article outlines the foundational functions every new Family Office should consider and the critical hires within them.

The Three Pillars

Before exploring specific roles, it is useful to understand how Family Offices evolve. Through our Family Office Maturity Model, we see five typical stages: Embedded, Early Stage, Developed, Professionalised, and Mature.

Each phase requires different capabilities, but it is the early stage that is most vulnerable to inefficiencies and risk. At this point, families need to hire strategically, ensuring they prioritise the capabilities that allow them to operate smoothly while growing.

We work closely with Family Offices at every stage of maturity. While each Family Office has unique objectives, ranging from wealth preservation and investment oversight to philanthropy, our experience shows that successful early-stage Family Offices always begin by building around three critical pillars:

Finance & Accounting:

This function ensures financial accuracy, transparency, and financial discipline. It is crucial because:

Family wealth often spans multiple entities, jurisdictions, and asset classes, requiring consolidated oversight.
Accurate accounting and reporting are essential for ensuring trust between family members and their advisors.
Tax, audit, and regulatory responsibilities require coordinated oversight.
Early financial governance prevents mismanagement, inefficiency, or compliance risk.

In short, this function provides the financial discipline and transparency that every Family Office depends on.

Investment

In our 2025 Global Family Office Compensation Benchmark Report, 66% of the surveyed Family Offices identified risk-adjusted growth as their primary goal. The Investment function is therefore the engine that drives long-term capital preservation and performance. It is crucial because:

Families need informed, unbiased oversight of existing assets and future opportunities.
A well-structured investment strategy prevents ad-hoc or reactive decision-making.
Professional due diligence reduces exposure to poor investments or unnecessary risk.
External managers, funds, and advisors require ongoing supervision and evaluation.
Many families want internal capability to steward wealth in a disciplined, objective, and holistic way.

In short, the investment function provides strategic stewardship of wealth.

Operations & Support

Operations is the backbone of the Family Office, ensuring coordination, continuity, and organisational efficiency. It is crucial because:

Family Offices must handle coordination across advisors, vendors, banks, lawyers, trustees, and internal stakeholders.
Administrative and operational efficiency ensures the principals’ time is protected and strategic work is prioritised.
Governance, document flow, and communication lines must be properly maintained from day one.
As the Family Office grows, operational processes must scale, and early structure prevents disorganisation later.
Operations provide the continuity and consistency that enable the finance and investment pillars to execute effectively.

In short, Operations enable the Finance and Investment pillars to execute effectively.

The Critical Hires

The roles below form the foundation of these three pillars. While each Family Office is unique, these hires consistently create stability, transparency, and momentum during the early stage.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Pillar: Finance & Accounting

The CFO provides the financial leadership and oversight required from day one.

Why This Hire Matters

Ensures accurate financial reporting, budgeting, and forecasting from day one.
Oversees cash flow, liquidity planning, and capital allocation to protect the family’s interests.
Coordinates seamlessly with external accountants, auditors, banks, and tax advisors.
Implements early financial controls that prevent blind spots or inefficiencies.

Seniority Considerations

Depending on complexity and AUM, this role may range from a part-time Finance Director to a full-fledged CFO.

Chief Investment Officer (CIO)

Pillar: Investments

The CIO is responsible for protecting and growing the family’s wealth through disciplined, informed investment oversight. They are crucial in long-term wealth preservation and growth.

In early-stage Family Offices, where investment governance may not yet be formalised, the CIO’s role is especially critical; they bring clarity, objectivity, and a professional framework to decision-making.

Why This Hire Matters

Provides strategic oversight of all investment activity and external managers.
Ensures decisions are driven by research, due diligence, and risk management.
Designs or refines investment strategies aligned with family goals and risk tolerance.
Constructs, monitors, and rebalances the portfolio with consistency and objectivity.
Communicates performance and strategic updates clearly to the principals.

Supporting Talent Consideration

Junior investment staff (Analysts, Associates) can support research, due diligence, modelling, and reporting, allowing the CIO to focus on strategic oversight.

Accountant (or Finance & Operations Associate)

Pillar: Finance & Accounting / Operations

While the CFO sets strategy, a dedicated accountant ensures the day-to-day financial engine runs smoothly. This role is essential for maintaining order, accuracy, and efficiency in the Family Office’s operational workflow.

Why This Hire Matters

Handles bookkeeping, payments, reconciliations, and invoice processing.
Supports financial reporting and prepares documentation for audits and reviews.
Maintains organised records across entities, assets, and transactions.
Assists with operational processes, improving overall efficiency as the Office grows.

This hands-on support prevents bottlenecks, safeguards against errors, and frees senior executives to focus on strategic work rather than administrative tasks.

Executive Assistant (EA) or Personal Assistant (PA)

Pillar: Operations & Support

Often underestimated, the EA or PA plays a central role in an early-stage Family Office. Their ability to streamline communication, manage priorities, and provide continuity is vital to the effectiveness of senior leadership.

Why This Hire Matters

Manages the principal’s schedules, travel, communication, and day-to-day priorities.
Coordinates administrative workflows and ensures tasks move seamlessly across the Office.
Supports HR activities such as onboarding, recruitment coordination, and vendor management.
Acts as the central point of communication across advisors, family members, and staff.

In smaller or newly formed Family Offices, this individual may also handle office management, project coordination, document control, or event logistics, responsibilities that become essential as activity increases.

Seniority Considerations

Depending on the principal’s lifestyle, the Family Office’s structure, and the level of support required, this role may be filled by an EA, PA, Chief of Staff, or a hybrid role that spans administration, operations, and project oversight.

Flexibility Across Roles

Again, every Family Office is different, so there truly is no “one-size-fits-all” model. Depending on AUM, asset complexity, investment strategy, and long-term ambition, these foundational roles often vary in seniority or may even be combined. In smaller or newly established Family Offices, it is common for employees to wear multiple hats. We regularly work on CFO/COO hybrid roles, and frequently see investment professionals picking up operational, analytical, or strategic tasks beyond their core remit.

We believe that this flexibility is a defining characteristic of early-stage Family Offices. At this point in the maturity journey, professionals tend to be generalists.

A finance professional may manage bookkeeping, reporting, and cash flow management to tax coordination and treasury.
An investment professional may oversee multi-asset portfolios, conduct due diligence across diverse deal types, oversee external managers, and support modelling, reporting, or risk analysis.

This generalist approach enables the Family Office to remain nimble, cost-efficient, and well-coordinated in its early years. As the Family Office progresses through the maturity model, from Early Stage to Developed, Professionalised, and ultimately Mature, its talent needs to naturally evolve. With increased scale, activity, and complexity, it will be very clear what specialist skills are required to support the family’s objectives.

As a Family Office matures, it often begins to hire asset-class specialists, such as private equity, venture capital, or real estate experts, to cater to its investment preferences. Governance and risk become more prominent, prompting the addition of dedicated compliance professionals, such as an in-house legal counsel.