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Alliance Research

Alliance Research

 

 
 
 

Having released more than 25 industry reports since our founding in 2003, Alliance Research has established our organization as the authority on North American multifamily offices. We are experts on this complex environment: its nuances, major challenges, and best practices. Since our founding, we have tracked the family wealth competitive landscape, published benchmarking studies, and synthesized industry trends and implications.

Alliance Research is available exclusively to members of The Family Wealth Alliance.


If you are a family wealth firm interested in receiving access to any of the reports listed below, we invite you to learn more about FWA membership.
If you are a news media representative or a member of a trade organization and wish to reference our research, please contact Brandelynn Perry.

 
 

 

           
          Fees & Pricing in Family Wealth: 2024 Report  
          Coming soon!  
             
             
       
 

The Landscape of Family Wealth: 2023 Report

  The Voice of the Client in Family Wealth: 2023 Report

 

Talent & Compensation in Family Wealth: 2022 Report

 
 

In 2023, The Family Wealth Alliance embarked on an in-depth exploration of the North American family wealth landscape with the goal of providing an up-to-date overview of our industry, highlighting its current dynamics, challenges, and opportunities. 

 

Our objective was to paint a clear and informative portrait of the industry's evolutionary stage and competitive outlook, examining various success metrics and growth strategies and identifying relevant trends and opportunities. This study's insights were informed by responses to a 50-question survey completed by 92 family wealth firms.

 

The Family Wealth Alliance partnered with an esteemed customer experience expert at Bain & Company, Eric Almquist, and leaders from prominent multifamily offices and Charles Schwab to embark on a transformative endeavor to understand the experiences of family wealth clients like never before.

The result was the creation of our industry-first Voice of the Client Survey, marked by the development of a best-in-class questionnaire tailored exclusively to family wealth firms.

Now, armed with this wealth of data, we present our inaugural aggregate benchmarking report, shedding light on key aspects that shape the family wealth client experience. 

 

Powered by Grant Thornton and in association with Charles Schwab. 

We know market-calibrated compensation is critical to your talent acquisition and retention strategies (it’s why you’ve been asking us to do a family wealth compensation study for years!).

But even more critical is understanding the full picture of today’s employee experience: compensation, benefits, remote work, DEI, and more. What are other family wealth firms doing to attract and retain talent – and is it working?

This study of 92 family wealth firms aims to capture the state of talent management and compensation in the family wealth industry,

 
     

 

 

     
   

   
 

Fees & Pricing in Family Wealth: 2020 Report

 

Young Professionals in Family Wealth: 2020 Report

 

2020 Multifamily
Office Standards

 
 

Conducted in partnership with WISE and in association with Charles Schwab. 

This study of 89 family wealth firms, last conducted in 2015, aims to capture the state of fees and pricing in the family wealth industry, broadly defined: methodologies, best practices, evolving trends, and issues of most impact to family wealth firms. 

Includes data on fee levels, fee mixes, discounting controls, and cost and profitability tracking.

 

Based on 57 qualitative interviews with under-40 professionals in the multifamily wealth space, including the 25 winners of the 2020 Alliance Young Professionals Awards, this report offers insight into questions like:

How do young professionals find their way into family wealth?

What challenges did they encounter early in their careers?

What makes a firm attractive to new entrants?

What training do they wish were available to new family wealth professionals?

What is the next "hot button" issue facing the industry?

 

Shortly after our founding in 2003, we realized that this novel, emerging industry needed to have definition. The Family Wealth Alliance is proud to be the first firm to have publicly released these standards so that firms – and the private families who would seek their unique experience – can benefit from objective guidelines.

This expanded 2020 version of our MFO Standards is meant to refresh and bring new life to these important industry-setting benchmarks.

 
         

 

 

 
       
 

COVID-19 & the Family Wealth Industry: 2020 Report

 

The Competitive Landscape in Family Wealth: 2019 Report

 

State of the Family Wealth Industry: 2018 Report

 
 

View the results of our May 2020 COVID-19 survey of over 100 family wealth firms, covering topics like:

How are firms adapting to stay at home/remote working policies?

When are firms expecting to reopen?

What are the biggest challenges facing families during the pandemic?

Includes interviews with select family wealth leaders on their experiences during the pandemic.

 

Alliance Research was the first to publicly list and chronicle multifamily offices in our 2004 Multifamily Office study. We followed with deep dives into the family wealth competitive landscape in 2007 and again in 2012, Now, we have the ability to look at new data points in light of that industry-first historical data.

Our 2019 report tells this story from multiple viewpoints:

Market analysis of gaps and opportunities, such as the number of private households in play who are apt to find a new advisor, the industry’s struggle with its category sell, and emerging ways private families are seeking advice

One-on-one interviews with five industry leaders with prescient commentary on this ever-changing landscape

Participant survey data from 41 participating firms

 

 

Industry leader interviews

Our top 15 trends

A status report on the firms that participated in our 2004 MFO Study (8% of the 64 firms have gone out of business; 30% have merged or been acquired)

Our 2005 MFO Standards

 
 

 

 

         
       
 

2018 Inaugural Healthcare Study

 

2017 2nd Annual Security Study

 

2016 11th Annual Multifamily Office Study

 
 

Family wealth firms are being drawn into the healthcare lives of their private clients. Indeed, nearly 70% of participants have some involvement, and about 60% expect their healthcare role to grow in the future.

Clearly, advancing client life expectancy – what we call longevity – is a major driver of this trend, as this report chronicles..

 

Family wealth firms are more heavily involved in the lives of their clients when it comes to security issues. This is a definite shift from when we studied this issue in 2012.


Yet when asked whether their clients were sufficiently informed about their risks, the number of insufficiently informed clients swelled from 21% five years ago to 38% today. What has fueled this change? Are clients just badly informed, or do they not believe their risks?

 

In this report, we chronicle the source of industry growth, who is growing the most, and the pick-up in M&A activity, which is often seen towards the end of a business cycle.

In a new twist, we interviewed a dozen top executives that produced an interesting array of insights.

 
 

 

 

         
           
 

2015 Inaugural Fees &
Pricing Study

         
 

Our goal with this report has been to chronicle one of the most misunderstood aspects of the family wealth business: How do firms like Multifamily Offices, External CIOs and other Wealth Manager firms directly charge their private clients?

Although we’ve been studying fee levels and types of fees since 2005, this is our first report devoted to this topic and is yet another innovative first by Alliance Research.