What is the Family Office Maturity Model?
The Family Office Maturity Model is a framework that helps families benchmark how their office operates across governance, people, process, and technology. It outlines the progression from ad hoc decision-making to an institutional, purpose-led organisation with clear roles, formal structures, and integrated systems.
For family offices, this model provides a practical way to diagnose current strengths and gaps, prioritise upgrades, and sequence change. It supports leadership in communicating progress, securing buy-in from stakeholders, and aligning investments in tools and talent with long-term objectives.
How the model is structured
- Foundational: Informal operations, limited governance, basic reporting, reliance on key individuals.
- Structured: Defined policies, clearer roles, documented controls, repeatable workflows.
- Integrated: Connected processes and data, software platform in place, risk and performance managed across silos.
- Institutional: Professional leadership, evidence-based decision-making, succession readiness, continuous improvement culture.
What to assess
- Governance: Family charter, investment policy, decision rights, meeting cadence, succession planning.
- People & capability: Role clarity, specialist coverage, training, external partner ecosystem.
- Process & control: Standard operating procedures, compliance, risk management, documentation.
- Data & technology: Source of truth, integrations, security posture, reporting and analytics.
- Purpose & impact: Mission alignment, philanthropy and impact policy, measurement.
Using the model
- Diagnose: Score each domain from 1 (Foundational) to 4 (Institutional) to create a heat map of maturity.
- Prioritise: Focus first on governance, controls, and a consolidated data foundation.
- Sequence: Tackle quick wins, then platform integrations, then advanced analytics and impact measurement.
- Communicate: Share targets, timelines, and KPIs with principals and stakeholders.
Why it matters: A clear maturity pathway reduces key-person risk, improves transparency, and creates resilience. It turns strategy into repeatable routines, supports intergenerational continuity, and ensures technology spend leads to measurable outcomes.