The latest JP Morgan Family Office research report is out: Why you should pay attention even if you don’t run a family office
A new JP Morgan Global Family Office is out and like many of these research studies, it highlights various trends in, and issues facing, single family offices. Notwithstanding that this report is about, and targeted to, single family offices, we believe it provides invaluable insights applicable to all families of wealth.
Before diving into some of the trends identified, and how leafplanner approaches the issues raised, it’s worth noting why we believe this information is important to more than those who currently identify as running a single family office. To explore that, let’s quickly level-set around the definition of a family office, and the concept of multigenerational wealth.
There are reported to be nearly 3,000 billionaires in the world, and the number of self-identified family offices worldwide is approaching 10,000, but there are likely 250,000 people, worldwide, with a net worth of $50 million or more.
While family offices are often seen as the result of having hundreds of millions, or even billions, of investable dollars to manage, we think a family office is best defined as recently articulated by Ed Marshall:
Family offices are more accurately described as a mindset and methodology. Because the primary objective of all family offices, regardless of resources, ambitions, family net worth, or operational and organizational style, is to improve the quality of life for families. Framed in this way, all of us technically have a family office. (emphasis added)
- Ed Marshall
Let’s combine that definition of a family office with a common understanding of multigenerational wealth. While there is no stated definition of multigenerational wealth, or delineation between the concept of leaving your heirs an inheritance, and planning for multigenerational wealth, our experience suggests that just as people underestimate their complexity, they also underestimate the likelihood of having multigenerational wealth.
In case you don’t think you have generational wealth, check out the table below. This assumes the simplest of compounding - doubling your investable assets every 10 years. Find your starting age and starting investable assets and see what happens! If you have your first $5mm of investable assets at age 30, by 90, you’ll likely have a $320mm fortune. If you have $80mm of investable assets at age 30, you’ll likely have a fortune of over $5b by the time you hit 90! And even if your first $5mm of investable assets isn’t in-hand till you’re age 50, you’ll still be aggregating a multi-generational pool of assets by age 90 of $80mm.
With that level setting around what a family office is and the likelihood that you will generate multigenerational wealth, you should see why we believe everyone should be paying attention to the trends exposed by various family office studies. Responding to these trends -and those that have been exposing themselves in the wealth industry over the past 30 years - led to the creation of leafplanner.
Here’s the latest from the new JP Morgan Global Family Office:
1. Highlight 76% have rising-generation engagement strategies in place to prepare younger family members for leadership roles, yet 28% cite lack of rising-generation preparedness as a top continuity and effectiveness risk
How leafplanner helps:
To bridge the gap between "having a strategy" and "achieving actual readiness," leafplanner turns abstract plans into a concrete, actionable roadmap. It replaces high-level theories with a digital "owner’s manual," allowing the rising generation to visualize the family’s entire ecosystem—from legal structures to advisor networks. By providing this transparent "single source of truth," it empowers younger members to move from passive observers to informed leaders, directly mitigating the risk of unpreparedness during a transition.
2. Highlight 57% cite preserving values, governance and legacy as a key family office objective
How leafplanner helps
Legacy is often lost not because of a lack of intent, but because of a lack of documentation. leafplanner captures the "why" behind the wealth, providing a central repository for family constitutions, mission statements, and the historical context of core assets. By making governance structures visible and accessible, it ensures that successive generations aren't just inheriting a portfolio, but are onboarding into a clearly defined culture and set of values. This digital "north star" bridges the gap between first-generation vision and multi-generational execution.
3. Highlight 86% lack clear succession plans for key family office decision makers; 51% see this as a significant risk to continuity and effectiveness
How leafplanner helps
Succession risk is highest when critical knowledge lives only in the heads of a few key individuals. leafplanner acts as a comprehensive "instruction manual" for the family office, mapping out legal structures, key advisor contacts, and decision-making frameworks. By organizing this institutional knowledge before a transition is necessary it ensures that a successor can step in with a full operational map rather than a series of puzzles. This transparency turns "succession" from a looming crisis into a manageable, documented process.
4. Highlight The further a family gets from its founding generation, the more it relies on formal governance to stay organized. In fact, adoption rates for governance in key areas like investment oversight often double by the second generation to ensure the family office remains effective and united.
How leafplanner helps
As families transition from a single founder to a complex multi-branch system, the need for formal structure becomes a necessity rather than an option. leafplanner facilitates this natural evolution by providing a professionalized framework that scales alongside the family. It centralizes investment oversight and decision-making protocols into a clear, shared interface, ensuring that as governance requirements double, the administrative burden does not. By documenting these processes, leafplanner creates a stable foundation for family cohesion to help facilitate the transition from one generation to the next.
5. Highlight Many family offices are leanly staffed and struggle to identify successors for key roles. Notably, 86% do not have clear succession plans in place, and slightly more than half of family offices (51%) consider the absence of a succession plan for decision makers as a risk to the continuity and effectiveness of their offices, and 33% ranked it as one of the top three risks.
How leafplanner helps
For leanly staffed family offices, leafplanner serves as a "digital chief of staff" that maintains continuity even during personnel turnover. It provides a standardized framework for collaboration, ensuring that all stakeholders—family members and external advisors alike—are working from a single, updated source of truth. This reduces the administrative burden on small teams and ensures that decision-making frameworks are consistently applied, protecting the office’s effectiveness against the risks of a "key person" dependency.
