Can one person move your family's money alone?
Find out in five business days, from a CFO to five family offices for eighteen years. $3,500. If no one can move your money alone, and every account is in your reports, you get every dollar back.
Read-only, in your own systems. I keep no copy of your documents; the finding is the only document that leaves. The call and the finding can be in Spanish.
Four questions, each answered from a document.
1: Who can move your money
Each bank's own signature mandate and entitlement report, read against your payments policy. A policy the bank does not enforce is a sentence, not a control.More than a third of family offices send 100 or more payments a month. NIST's standard: no single individual both initiates and approves a transaction, executives included. Bank of America, Family Office Study, 2025 · NIST IR 7621 Rev. 1 Run this test yourself
2: Accounts no report shows
Every account on every statement for one month, traced to an entity, then to a line in your latest report.A third of family offices manage 50 or more bank accounts. Bank of America, Family Office Study, 2025 Run this test yourself
3: Reporting rebuilt by hand
The workbooks behind the quarterly report: every typed figure, every link, and the hours they take.About a third of family offices do more than half their reporting by hand. Campden Wealth and AlTi Tiedemann, Operational Excellence Report, 2025 Run this test yourself
4: Work only one person can do
Each recurring task, walked through with the person who does it, and a search for the written procedure.70% of family offices report difficulty hiring; 65% worry about keeping key staff. Campden Wealth and AlTi Tiedemann, Operational Excellence Report, 2025 Run this test yourself
The money finding first. The rest by day five.
- 01Day 1
Access
Your office creates read-only logins to online banking and gives read access to the mandates, the entity list and the latest report. The five business days start when the access in the letter is given.
- 02Days 2 to 4
The twenty tests
The money finding comes within 48 hours of read access to your bank mandates, to the principal and the CFO together.
- 03Day 4
The draft
To the principal and the CFO together. The CFO has one business day to correct facts, in a reply attached to the finding.
- 04Day 5
The finding
To both, every gap beside its document, and an hour together on it.
The fraud protocol. If something looks like fraud, I stop the work and tell the principal in writing the same day. If money appears to be in transit, I tell the principal at once, so the bank can be called. What happens next is the family's decision. If the principal appears to be involved, I stop the work, return the fee in full, and step away. Nothing here limits a disclosure the law requires.
A finished one, on a fictitious family office.
Two banks where one person can release a wire alone. Three entities, $4.2 million, that no report shows. Each beside the mandate, the statement or the workbook it rests on. Every name and figure in it is invented; the method and the form are the real engagement’s.
What a family can check.
ParetoAlpha does not discuss the families it works for, and will not confirm one. What a family can check before signing: the specimen, which is the real method and form on a fictitious office; the insurance certificate; the engagement letter and the NDA; a call before anything is signed; and the refund, which puts the fee at ParetoAlpha's risk.
Each check is measured: its hours, its accounts, whether it was delivered by day five, and whether it was refunded. Who does it: J.R. Barbieri.
The fee, $3,500, returned on two conditions. If the bank's own documents show that no one can move your money alone, and every account appears in your reports, you get every dollar back. If the finding is not delivered in five business days, the same, unless I have stopped the work under the fraud protocol on this page.
- The fee is invoiced and paid by wire before day one.
- “Alone” means releasing a payment without a second person's approval, as each bank's own mandate and entitlement report show it. An account is in your reports when it appears in the latest consolidated report.
- The five business days, and the promise, run from the day you give the read access listed in the letter: bank mandates and entitlement reports, the payments policy, the entity register, one month of statements, the latest report and its workbooks, and an hour with each person who runs a recurring task.
- A refund is returned to the account the fee came from within ten business days of the finding, or of day five if the finding is late.
It prepares no tax return, gives no tax, legal or investment advice, audits no financial statement and changes nothing in any system.
Before anything is signed.
- I am not a CPA. This is not an audit or an attest engagement.
- Under the letter, ParetoAlpha's liability is limited to the fee paid.
- ParetoAlpha holds no SOC report or ISO certificate. I complete your security questionnaire instead.
- Your office creates the read-only logins to online banking, logs their use and revokes them on day five.
- I keep no copy of your documents. My copy of the finding is kept for four years under the NDA, then destroyed.
- Insured: professional liability, $2 million per claim and $2 million in the aggregate; cyber liability, $1 million. The certificate comes with the engagement letter.
- The engagement letter and the NDA come before any access. After the five days, nothing follows unless you ask. The signed engagement letter governs. Read the letter and the NDA.
Request the Controls Check.
A call with me comes before anything is signed. Nothing from your books is asked for before the engagement letter and the NDA.
For the firm that introduces a family. ParetoAlpha pays no referral fee and takes none. I manage no money. The finding goes only to the family. Whoever introduced you learns that the check is done only if you agree to it in the letter. Send it to a colleague.