The Spear’s Family Office index appears in two parts for the first time in 2026. Where the Advisory and Consultancy Index covers the strategic and governance-oriented work of establishing and evolving a family office, the Banking & Investment Services Index covers what sits inside one: the banking infrastructure, investment management, lending capability, custody and cross-divisional access that a family office requires to function at institutional level.
A family office offers a centralised and discreet way for families to manage their wealth and their lives. Each family office unit relies on a top-tier family office banking and investment adviser to manage portfolios, formulate succession plans and protect long-term wealth.
[See also: The Spear’s Wealth Management Indices 2026]
Trends in 2026
The impact of the Budget
For UK-focused practitioners, the non-dom reforms introduced in the 2024 Autumn Budget have changed the client landscape materially. James Arthey of Barclays Private Bank, whose clients are typically highly internationally mobile and present across around 20 jurisdictions, notes that of approximately 50 clients, around four or five have offshored since the changes. Having global capabilities to support relocation is now a meaningful competitive advantage; on the investment side, he notes, many clients already had sophisticated strategies in place to manage market risk – with, as he puts it, ‘airbags and safety belts’ built in.
Related
Explore the other rankings within the 2026 Spear’s Wealth Management Indices:
- Best UHNW Wealth Managers
- Best HNW Wealth Managers
- Best Wealth Planners
- Best Wealth Managers: Jersey
- Best Wealth Managers: Guernsey
- Best Wealth Managers: Switzerland
- Best Wealth Managers: Middle East
- Best Family Office Advisory & Consultancy
Andrew Gallant of Deutsche Bank covers 20 multibillion families in the UK and observes that some clients who relocated to Dubai for tax reasons are now questioning whether the geopolitical risks there outweigh the fiscal benefits. His starting point with every client relationship is consistent: ‘I always start my conversations with clients around: what are your problems? What are your pain points? Where can we potentially help you with something that you are not finding easy?’ His view of where Deutsche Bank adds most value is equally direct: ‘Where you need that complexity and creativity and cross-border solutions, we really excel.’
Institutional expectations
A recurring theme across the advisers in this Index is the degree to which family offices now operate – and expect to be treated – as institutional clients. François-Olivier Mercier, who leads UBS‘s family office coverage within its global and institutional wealth division, describes the convergence with institutional approaches as structural rather than cyclical.
Family offices are increasingly staffed by professionals from hedge funds and asset management, bringing expectations around open architecture, separated execution and custody that the traditional private banking model was not designed to deliver.
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Robert Kalff of HSBC Private Bank works with families in the billionaire range, drawing on the bank’s capabilities across private banking, corporate banking, investment banking and global markets. David Clerey of Northern Trust brings a deliberately flexible model where services are a la carte and his team is structured to integrate into an existing family office rather than replace it, with capabilities spanning global custody, core banking, asset-backed lending and multi-asset investment management.
[See also: Why outsourcing has become the defining question for modern family offices]
The professionals featured here are assessed by the Spear’s Research Unit across the full range of this work: banking infrastructure, investment management, lending, custody, cross-border execution and the institutional-grade capabilities that the most complex private wealth structures require.
Click the links below to jump to a section of this article:
- Methodology
- Best family office banking and investment advisers: some names to know
- Best family office banking and investment advisers: the complete list
- Contact us
Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to The Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
Best family office banking and investment advisers: some names to know
Robert Kalff
- Focus: Comprehensive family wealth management
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: HSBC Private Bank
As head of HSBC Private Bank’s family office operations, Robert Kalff nurtures relationships with some of the world’s wealthiest families.
‘Our primary role is to deliver the whole firm to these families; not just the private bank but the corporate and investment banks, global markets and asset management,’ he tells Spear’s.
As part of his work with HSBC Private Bank’s ‘very large, global, complex families’, he curates quarterly roundtables, bringing together entrepreneurs, founders and industry experts such as Blackstone’s Jon Gray and Apollo Global Management’s Marc Rowan.
Kalff joined HSBC in 2022 to help the bank expand its ultra-high-net-worth clientele and drive new business development. He has over 25 years of experience working in private and investment banking and has held prominent roles at J.P. Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.
Read Robert Kalff’s full profile on Spears500.com
James Arthey
- Focus: Wealth creation strategies
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: Barclays Private Bank & Wealth Management
James Arthey has been with Barclays since 2008. He operates within the bank’s family office team, working closely with more than 50 UHNW families across 20 different countries to help them achieve their financial ambitions and create wealth management strategies.
He leads a small team that is responsible for bringing new families into the firm’s family office offering; helping to establish investment portfolios for family offices; and reviewing current family office investment structures and making improvements.
For Arthey, communication is key, particularly in times of market instability. ‘On the investment side, we will already have put in place a very sophisticated strategy around managing risk, and it’s all about reminding them of the airbags and safety belts that we’ve got in place,’ he says.
Read James Arthey’s full profile on Spears500.com
Andrew Gallant
- Focus: Single-family-office investments
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: Deutsche Bank AG
Director of family offices at Deutsche Bank, Andrew Gallant works with UHNW families across the world, tailoring bespoke solutions relating to their investment, business and succession planning needs.
Gallant’s experience in managing and substantiating the wealth of UHNW families started at Barclays, where he served as a private banker. Since joining Deutsche Bank in 2021, Gallant has amassed a client book valued in the billions of euros and helped to create a gateway service for his clients to access the full scope of Deutsche Bank’s investment and corporate banking capabilities.
‘Our number-one selling point is that for family offices in particular, we’re less suited to the lower-end wealth management space,’ Gallant tells Spear’s. ‘When you need complexity and creativity and cross-border solutions, we really excel.’
Read Andrew Gallant’s full profile on Spears500.com
David Clerey
- Focus: Family investment management
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: Northern Trust
David Clerey is the head of Northern Trust’s global family office group in EMEA and APAC, overseeing the delivery of asset management, bank and fiduciary solutions to globally mobile families with considerable wealth.
A former Credit Suisse banker, he is especially interested in harnessing advanced technology to gain deeper insight into clients’ portfolios, stress-test them to identify vulnerabilities and adjust risk profiles where necessary. For new clients who feel their current family office structure is not operating as effectively as it should, Clerey and his team can conduct detailed analyses and provide project management support.
‘What we do is à la carte,’ he tells Spear’s. ‘Families have a lot of options.’
Read David Clerey’s full profile on Spears500.com
Best family office banking and investment advisers: the complete list
Contact us
- To apply for inclusion in The Spear’s 500, complete our submission form.
- For further information about rankings and entries, please email research@spearswms.com; we aim to respond to all queries within two working days.
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- To keep up to date with the Spear’s 500, subscribe to our magazine, newsletter and follow Spear’s on Linkedin and Instagram.
- If you have missed calendar deadlines for our research cycles in 2026, you can still register your interest for updates about upcoming research and rankings.
- Click here to order a print copy of The Spear’s 500.
With additional reporting by Caitlin Kilpatrick
