Becoming a ‘trusted’ advisor: Stonehage Fleming

What services does Stonehage Fleming offer?

We help families manage and protect their wealth. As their trusted adviser, we provide counsel, management and implementation across the full spectrum of family and family wealth requirements. We are as comfortable playing a key role in the Family Council or Investment Committee as we are arranging for priceless art to be hung on the wall.

Our clients are some of the world’s leading families, often with complicated cross border requirements. We help them determine a strategy and purpose for their wealth, and ultimately assist them to transition their wealth to the next generation.

Tell us a bit more about what differentiates Stonehage Fleming from other Family Offices.

Our differentiator is not our expertise but the experience we have acquired over decades working with successful families. Our local presence combined with our global reach enables us to deal with complex, multi-jurisdictional families.

Our client relationships span several generations – the Fleming Family for example is into its sixth generation, and we are advising the third generation of other families served since the 1970s. This reinforces our culture of honesty and discretion which helps to build trust. The practical wisdom afforded to us through these longstanding relationships cannot be easily replicated.

Why is trust important?

Working with families and their family offices is not only about performance, it’s also about building trust and working seamlessly together in order to meet their strategic goals.

Our business model is based on long-term relationships and open communications with our clients across multiple generations. One of our values is moral courage and we will always act with integrity and conviction, asking difficult and challenging questions – we would rather be respected than popular!

Our service centres around regular contact with our clients and the provision of coordinated advice. It is critical that we stay up-to-date with the family environment and proactively respond to their changing needs.

Tell us a bit more about how you approach your client relationships.

We start by asking clients what the purpose of their wealth is. We first identify what a family is trying to achieve and what their values are, then build a narrative around their history. In doing that we can begin to understand the ‘DNA’ of the family and their mentality towards assets and risks. We believe that no financial legacy can survive through the generations without addressing these key issues first.

We identified four pillars of capital – financial, cultural, social and intellectual – that are key to the long-term sustainability of family wealth. We do not impose solutions. We use our extensive personal and professional experience to support families in achieving their goals.