Most family offices are small. Small offices run on people who know things nobody else knows.
That is not a failing. It is how a five-person office gets its recurring work done. The risk is not that the person is there. It is that nothing is there when they are not.
What the published figures say
- 63% of family offices have six or fewer employees (Citi Private Bank, 2025 Global Family Office Report, n=346).
- 70% report difficulty hiring, and 65% worry about retaining key staff (Campden Wealth and AlTi Tiedemann, Operational Excellence Report 2025, n=146).
Six people, hard to hire, hard to keep. Each person in that office can hold work no one else has done.
On succession, the reports disagree, and the disagreement is worth reading. J.P. Morgan’s 2026 Global Family Office Report finds that 86% have no clear succession plan for key decision-makers; 14% have a defined process. RBC’s 2025 report finds that 69% have a plan.
These are not two measurements of one thing. Each report defines “plan” its own way, and asks a different population. None of them is the figure. And both ask about the people who decide. This note is about the people who do: the controller, the assistant, the bookkeeper. Their tasks recur every month, and none of the reports we read measures whether they are written down.
The test, in one afternoon
List every task that recurs. Monthly, quarterly, yearly. Capital calls. Grant schedules. Payroll. Bank and portal log-ins. Estimated tax payments. Insurance renewals. Bill pay. Entity filings.
For each task, write three things.
- Who knows how to do it. By name.
- Whether it is written down. Where, and when it was last true.
- What breaks if that person is away for a month. A date, an amount, or a door that stays shut.
A month is the right test. It is long enough to cross a due date. It is short enough to happen to anyone: a surgery, a family emergency, a sabbatical, a resignation with four weeks’ notice.
Any row with one name, nothing written, and a date in the third column is a key-person risk.
Continuity, not suspicion
BDO calls this “When the Glue is Gone”: knowledge held by a few people, with cross-training, internal control reviews, and dual approval over a threshold as the answer.
Kaufman Rossin makes a sharper point. Fraud in a family office can come from “a previously trustworthy employee” after a life event, so duties are separated even where trust is complete.
Read that as a point about continuity. A written procedure accuses no one. It protects the person who does the task as much as the family: when the work is written down, nobody has to wonder whether it was done right, and the person who knows it can take a holiday. The procedure is the same whether the reason for the absence is a resignation, an illness, or nothing at all.
A worked example
The office in the Controls Check specimen. It is fictitious: no family, person, fund or foundation in it is real. Three rows from its afternoon test.
| Recurring task | Who knows it | Written down? | If that person is away for a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital calls across 7 private funds | The controller only | No | A call goes unpaid past its due date, and the fund's default terms apply. |
| The foundation's grant schedule and payout | The family's longtime assistant only | No | December's grants are not made by 31 December. |
| Bank and portal log-ins | The controller, partly the principal | In part, in a spreadsheet | Access is rebuilt bank by bank. |
None of the three people is doing anything wrong. The assistant has run the grants for years. The log-ins work. Every task is done. None of them would be done in a month without the person.
The third row is the slowest to fix after the fact. Access is re-established with each bank in turn, through its own process, while payments wait.
What it would take
For the specimen office: two one-page procedures, and a second person who has done each task once.
One page for capital calls. Where call notices arrive. The list of the seven funds, with each fund’s notice period and wire instructions as held on file. Who approves the wire, and who releases it. Where the log of calls paid is kept.
One page for the foundation’s grants. The schedule, by grantee and date. Where the board’s approvals are kept. The December date by which the last wire leaves. Who signs.
The log-ins follow from the two. Each page names the accounts it touches, and who besides its author can reach them. Gaps on that list are the bank-by-bank work to do now, while everyone is present.
A second person does each task once. Not reads the page: does the task, from the page, with the author watching. That is the only test of a procedure. Where the page is wrong, the second person finds it, and the author corrects it.
One page, not a manual. A manual is written once and not opened again. A page is short enough to be checked each time the task is done, and to be true the next time someone needs it.
Frequently asked
What is key-person risk in a family office?
The chance that a recurring task stops because the one person who knows it is away. It is measured task by task, not person by person.
What happens if our controller leaves?
Run the test above on the controller’s tasks first. Each row with no written procedure and a date in the third column is what happens. Each row with a page and a second person who has done it is what does not.
Is this the same as a succession plan?
No. A succession plan names who decides next. This test asks who can do the work next month. An office can have one without the other.