Greenleaf Trust is among the nation's largest, privately-held wealth management firms. By virtue of our exemplary, client-first culture and depth of actionable expertise, we are also among the best. We know that for a family’s wealth to sustain ensuing generations, its capital has to grow and its governance must endure. The deeply rooted Family Office at Greenleaf Trust helps families achieve those requirements and many more.
Serving the ultra-affluent is the sole reason for our family office. It’s all we do, and we do it exceedingly well. The deep-rooted bond of trust that we share with our clients is one we patiently earn over time by coming to understand their wants and needs, their concerns and challenges, the events they foresee down the road, and what they want their wealth to ultimately enable.
Financial strength and clarity of mission empower us to put the interests of our clients first, our employees second and our shareholders third.
TYPICAL TRAITS OF ATYPICAL FAMILIES
Highest expectations of privacy Owns heirloom properties
Has $25,000,000+ of investable assets
Travels widely Has or should have a family office Owns or owned a business Values multigenerational planning investorSophisticatedprofile
Focused on legacy Has or wants a family foundation
Highest expectations of service
Our long-term business model is predicated on our clients’ long-term success. The same Greenleaf Trust culture that elevates our clients’ interests above all others compels us to harness the most robust technologies, the most sophisticated investment platforms, and the most comprehensive reporting tools.
You’ll see evidence of this in our strategic partnerships with industry-leading advisory firms. These alliances strengthen our already keen insights into asset allocation, manager selection and ongoing investment monitoring.
You’ll see further evidence of Greenleaf Trust’s client-first culture in our comprehensive and consolidated reporting. We provide a clear and instructional view of each client’s all-in assets in terms of location and allocation, benchmark analysis, performance analytics, fund managers, risk analysis, alternative investment reporting and entity-level reporting. It sounds complicated because it is. But it isn’t difficult for clients to understand, thanks to the clear and straightforward way in which we compile and present the information.
Owing to the fact that Greenleaf Trust is not a publicly traded firm obligated to maximize short-term shareholder profits, we have the benefit of time in order to earn the trust of our clients. Continuously thereafter, we retain it by providing client-specific solutions that surpass the lackluster service offerings of others.
THIS LIFE WAS ALWAYS POSSIBLE.
WE’VE ENSURED IT REMAINS SO.
I. a FAMILY WEALTH BLUEPRINT DESIGN
Clarify Planning
–
Multigenerational comprehensive wealth plan development
• Wealth distribution-waterfall analysis
• Illiquidity analysis
– Family wealth governance planning
• Family wealth mission statements
• Family wealth accessibility policies
• Wealth education
– Multigenerational asset allocation reports
• Comprehensive wealth view
• Consolidated asset reporting
I. b . FAMILY WEALTH BLUEPRINT EXECUTION
Optimization Planning
– Tax minimization planning
• Multigenerational/dynastic trust planning
• Strategic net worth reduction planning (leveraged wealth transfer planning)
• Sophisticated income tax planning (derivative, partnership, state-level tax elimination, capital gain tax deferral-reduction planning, and pre-monetization planning)
• Strategic charitable income tax planning
• Innovative wealth solutions (integration of partnership income tax planning, wealth transfer planning, derivative-based planning strategies, and/or charitable-based strategies)
• Strategic postmortem estate settlement planning
• Pre-monetization/business succession planning
• Equity risk management/single stock concentration planning (derivative and nonderivative-based planning)
– Creditor protection planning
• Self-settled trust planning (domestic asset protection trust planning, DAPT statutes)
• Irrevocable trust planning (generation protection trust planning)
• Family limited liability/partnership investment company planning
– Portfolio volatility minimization planning
• Family wealth/risk policy statements
◊ Tax characterization analysis
◊ Cash flow and liquidity constraint analysis
◊ Sustainability analysis
◊ Asset location planning analysis
• Single stock concentration planning
◊ Completion fund planning
◊ Hedging/derivative planning
I. c . FAMILY WEALTH BLUEPRINT MANAGEMENT
Family Office Services
– Family administration planning
• Bill pay
• Payroll management/processing
• Comprehensive wealth plan development updates/modifications
• Family wealth scorecard analysis
• Cash flow/debt management
• Governance/wealth education/family meetings
– Wealth strategy administration
• Administration of complex family structures (intra-family loans/GRATs/NIMCRUTs/ CLATs/SET trusts/sale to IDITs/family investment entities [pro rata/preferred])
• Administration of complex alternative investments (capital calls, commitment schedules and pacing analysis)
• Comprehensive and consolidated wealth reporting
– Entity administration planning
• Complex trusts, simple trusts, and grantor trusts
• Capital account/equity ownership interest maintenance
• Preparation of minutes of entity meetings
• Private foundations
• Private/closely held company financial statements (preparation/review)
II. COMPREHENSIVE AND CONSOLIDATED WEALTH REPORTING
INCLUDES LIQUID ASSETS, ILLIQUID ASSETS, INTANGIBLE ASSETS AND HARD ASSETS
– Comprehensive wealth view
– Consolidated asset reporting
• Multiaccount consolidation
• Multimanager consolidation
• Multigeneration consolidation
• Asset allocation and location profile reporting
– Consolidated performance reporting (benchmark analysis)
• Consolidated family-level view (aggregate family accounts)
• Family line-level view
• Asset/security-level view
• Manager-level view
• Account-level view
– Performance analytics
• Risk analytics (standard deviation, Sharpe ratio, alpha, beta)
• Performance attribution
– Alternative investment reporting (private equity, hard-to-value/illiquid assets)
– Entity-level reporting (partnership reporting, family investment entities)
• Financial statements (balance sheet, income statements, profit/loss)
• Capital account/inside-outside basis
III. INVESTMENT ADVISORY SERVICES
– Discretionary portfolio management
• Institutional third-party alternative investment consultant access
• Open architecture third-party SMA platform
• Greenleaf Trust research team (individual stock/bond portfolio construction)
– Ongoing construction, management and oversight of investment portfolios
– Risk and liquidity management (equity risk management, single stock)
– Investment/risk policy assessment (asset allocation planning)
– Asset location planning
– Strategic and tactical asset allocation advice and rebalancing
– Private equity, hedge fund and nontraditional asset analysis
– Manager of managers services
• Manager research, selection and due diligence
• Customized and consolidated/aggregated multiadvisor reporting services
• Establish and benchmark third-party investment mandates
IV. FIDUCIARY AND CUSTODIAN SERVICES
ACTS AS TRUSTEE OR DIRECTED TRUSTEE FOR MICHIGAN AND DELAWARE SITUS TRUSTS
– Accurate, efficient trust operations and asset custody
– Sophisticated fiduciary excellence
– Tax and regulatory reporting
– Audit and regulatory oversight
– Consultation on current trust structure(s) (including tax, situs and administration effectiveness)
– Reformation, total return and decanting analysis (including GST/grandfathered GST considerations)
– Marketable and unique/hard-to-value asset management
– Accurate, concise trust recordkeeping including principal and income accounting
– Exercise of discretion on behalf of trusts
– Proactive, open collaboration with outside advisors
– Balancing of interests among grantor, income and principal beneficiaries
– Grantor, trustee and beneficiary education and advice
– Consolidation of recordkeeping and financial reporting with family-level assets
V. PHILANTHROPIC SERVICES
– Philanthropic strategy consulting, mission and structure analysis (private foundations, donor advised funds, charitable trusts, charitable LLCs, conservation easements)
– Entity formation and regulatory filings
– Entity administration and annual regulatory and tax filings
– Grant making administration services
– Board reporting and ongoing consultation with board of directors
– Family education services
VI. LIFESTYLE ENHANCEMENT SERVICES
Concierge Services
– Personal family security services (household help, background checks, security for individuals and home/business security)
– Technology security services
– Substance abuse consultation and management
– Personal property inventory and management
– Aircraft advice (travel needs analysis, lease/own analysis, aircraft inspection, insurance, management and maintenance of airplanes and crew)
– Art advisory services (inventory, insurance, storage, transport, acquisition of collections, auction and sale)
– Real estate management (multiuse, commercial, residential, farm and ranch property)
– Timber and mineral rights management
– Oil and gas management
VII. SINGLE FAMILY OFFICE
OUTSOURCED THIRD PARTY PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT
– Clarify planning
– Comprehensive and consolidated family wealth reporting
– Investment advisory services
– Sophisticated fiduciary services (non-state fiduciary income tax and DAPT statute situs)
– Philanthropic services
– Concierge services
– Strategic wealth consulting services
– Private family trust company consulting
VIII. STRATEGIC WEALTH CONSULTING SERVICES
– Multigenerational comprehensive wealth plan development
– Tax minimization planning
• Multigenerational/dynastic trust planning
• Strategic net worth reduction planning (leveraged wealth transfer planning)
• Sophisticated income tax planning (derivative, partnership, state-level tax elimination, capital gain tax deferral-reduction planning, and pre-monetization planning)
• Strategic charitable income tax planning
• Innovative wealth solutions (integration of partnership income tax planning, wealth transfer planning, derivative-based planning strategies, and/or charitable-based strategies)
• Strategic postmortem estate settlement planning
• Pre-monetization/business succession planning
• Equity risk management/single stock concentration planning (derivative- and nonderivative-based planning)
We work with families at every level of the wealth continuum, from first generation wealth creators, to second generation family investment and fiduciary offices, to multigenerational single family offices. As a rule, their needs are complex and reoccurring.
How well each client is able to address those needs, and the extent to which we’re asked to provide solutions, tends to reflect the family’s overall level of wealth and the number of generations involved. As wealth increases, and as family involvement increases, so does complexity and the need for sophisticated data, asset management and custodial services.
We provide enduring solutions at every tier, sometimes more, sometimes fewer, depending on the size and capability of the client’s own staff.
First generation family wealth offices tend to have limited staff, who are often employees of the family’s business. Their needs, and the level of services we provide, are comprehensive. There is considerable wealth, of course, owing perhaps to the sale of a business or to other circumstances. This newer, higher level of wealth adds complexity and responsibilities that are unfamiliar. Returns are important, as always, but not the sole focus. Legacy issues take on new meaning and importance. We offer a full suite of solutions that include, among others, wealth blueprint design (clarifying, optimization, management), comprehensive reporting, investment advisory services, fiduciary and custodial services, philanthropic services, and lifestyle enhancement services.
Second generation fiduciary and investment offices tend to have slightly larger dedicated staff that capably manage, perhaps, half of their needs, and rely on us, in turn, to manage the balance. These clients have had the benefit of time to become more integrated and intentional in their process and approach and are looking beyond first and second generation wealth. Examples of the services we often provide to these families include comprehensive wealth view, consolidated asset and performance reporting, philanthropic strategies, private equity, hedge fund and nontraditional asset access, and family wealth governance.
At the highest tier of wealth, where multigenerational family offices customarily have full-time, dedicated staff, many of their needs are managed in-house. While we may be asked to provide fewer solutions, they’re no less beneficial. These may entail, for example, tax sensitive fiduciary services, private family trust company consulting, equity risk management, and multigenerational comprehensive wealth plan diagnostic planning.
No two clients are the same. The only constants are the robust, intelligent solutions we provide, and the exceptionally high levels of personalized service.
OUR HORIZON IS NOT THE NEXT QUARTER but the next quarter century.
CUSTOMARY NEEDS OF A FAMILY OFFICE
Bill payment services
Cash management
Comprehensive consolidated reporting
Cybersecurity
Document management
Estate structuring
Fiduciary and custodian services
Financial planning
Investment advisory services
Lifestyle enhancement
Multigenerational governance
Partnership/entity administration
Payroll management/processing
Philanthropic services
Risk management
Strategic tax consulting
Strategic
wealth consulting
Tax compliance
FAMILY OFFICE CONTINUUM
Multigenerational Family Office
Increasing staff & costs
Fiduciary & Investment Family Office
Increasing liquidity, complexity & sophistication
First Generation Shared Resource Family Office
Just as a house needs a BLUEPRINT to be built, so does wealth.
The Family Office at Greenleaf Trust provides a single family office service experience that brings clarity and understanding to the opaque view often associated with significant wealth and complex wealth structures.
This is achieved, in part, by a family wealth blueprint design: a revealingly comprehensive overview that empowers families and their trusted advisors to identify and subsequently manage and refine multigenerational family wealth-related goals and intentions.
Optimization of a family’s wealth governance is thereafter achieved through wealth plan execution which affords families access to a sophisticated, customized and fully integrated multigenerational wealth management consulting process. This seeks to minimize the collateral loss of wealth to portfolio volatility, taxes and creditors.
Thereafter, by way of wealth plan management, family wealth plans are serviced and enhanced by a team of family office experts specializing in family, trust and entity administration.
Multigenerational Consolidated Asset
Allocation Reporting
Trust Summaries &
Integrated Financial Flowchart Design
Power of Appointment Analysis & Summary
Income Tax Compliance Analysis & Review
Financial Planning
Qualified & Nonqualified Plan Analysis
Life Insurance Analysis
Entity Analysis
Family Wealth Blueprint Design
Comprehensive Wealth Diagnostic
Property Casualty Insurance Analysis
Liquidity – Illiquidity Analysis
Equity Risk Management –Single Stock Analysis
Virtual Client Document Vault
Multigenerational Wealth Distribution –Waterfall Analysis
Estate, Gift & GST Tax Analysis & Calculations
Family Wealth Governance Plan
The Family Office at Greenleaf Trust + Family’s
Trusted Advisors: Attorney CPA Banker
Investment Advisor
Fiduciary Trustee
Chief Financial Officer (via Family Business)
Fully Integrated Multigenerational Wealth Structuring
Clarity and understanding are all-important. To ensure that the family is controlling its wealth and not the other way around, we work in concert with the family’s trusted advisors in order to fully integrate our collective knowledge and insights. In our experience, multigenerational wealth management is best achieved when those who have a stake in its success also have a voice in its execution.
THERE’S NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT to brighten the future.