How do we support Asian HNW families?

Wealthy Asian families have more investments, corporate ventures, businesses and private structures than ever before. As a family’s wealth grows – or becomes intergenerational – the family’s needs further evolve. Wealth needs to be protected, succession planned and with more members coming in and generating their own wealth, new structures need to be set up. Philanthropic and charitable giving are also common, and a family may have vehicles for these purposes, too.

The result is often a ‘web’ of global entities and vehicles that need to be administered and managed correctly.

The issue we see is that over time the family’s structures becoming more complex to accommodate their changing needs. One family might have 30 or more structures for different reasons. This is a good thing – it means wealth is actively deployed, invested, or in structures like a trust. Equally, it can be time-consuming, complex, expensive and difficult to oversee all these entities, and many sophisticated family offices find challenges when managing the myriad issues alone. Families, their advisers and family offices are increasingly asking service providers like ZEDRA to step in and coordinate of facilitating this role.

It’s not that a family needs to reduce the number of structures: even if a family has many entities, these will be carefully set up for different uses. Instead, families and their advisors are looking for a partner who can manage the entities, maintain strategic oversight of the vehicles and streamline the day-to-day management and administration of these. Given the scope of a family’s interests, the service provider must understand and have experience with corporate, fund and private wealth structures, rather than a specialisation in only one of those areas.

Forward thinking

Planning for the future and ensuring that the right succession plans are in place is critical for many wealthy families using Singapore as a hub for their wealth. Equally, our clients also want to work with a service provider who can see the bigger picture on a global scale and help them respond to regulatory and legislative changes.

As the regulatory landscape changes globally, clients need to adapt accordingly, perhaps restructuring or ensuring that their vehicles are compliant with new rules. Our clients require the support of a partner who anticipates future changes which might impact them or their assets and what it means practically for their global entities. Our clients are looking to us to be proactive, not reactive, and we have integrated this into our Active Wealth approach. We work closely with advisors to provide a seamless service to help clients deal with regulatory changes quickly and efficiently. For clients with a web of holding and entities, this is crucial.

Active Wealth: our client approach

ZEDRA’s Active Wealth approach is ideal for wealthy families because it aims to serve clients holistically, rather than dividing family structures into silos that are categorised based on the entity’s purpose and the underlying assets.

Our clients often have very diverse assets. These include real estate, private investments, a family business, illiquid assets, debt, and so on. A family wants to benefit from our services with a single point of contact and a team who understands the bigger picture, rather than having multiple points of contact which can lead to a disjointed approach to servicing. ZEDRA’s approach provides a single point of contact for the client. Behind that point of contact are various specialist teams with the depth of experience needed to service the client’s funds, corporate and private wealth needs. Through our Active Wealth approach, we bring the best quality service and expertise, help our clients save money, and we remove the burden of managing and overseeing so many structures.

Active Wealth reflects the needs of modern family business owners, entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals. These clients require a multitude of different services linked to their family wealth. They also see less of a divide between personal and corporate interests: they often want these handled by the same service provider with a single point of contact, rather than multiple providers or several contacts within the same organisation.

Instead of requiring private, corporate or fund services separately, under the ZEDRA Active Wealth umbrella, private clients and their advisors can liaise with a single contact in any of our offices, streamlining and simplifying services and risk management across their holdings.