The Spear’s Family Office Services Index appears in two parts for the first time in 2026. The division reflects a distinction that practitioners in this area have always understood: the work of advising a family on whether and how to establish or evolve a family office is structurally different from providing the investment and banking infrastructure that sits within one.
This index covers the former: the strategic, governance-oriented, structurally independent work of family office consultancy and advisory.
It is a discipline that has grown considerably in scope. The consolidation reshaping the multi-family office market – most visibly Stonehage Fleming’s acquisition by the American giant Corient – has changed the competitive landscape that families navigate when considering their options. Meanwhile the questions families bring to these advisers have deepened: how to structure for a next generation that thinks differently about ownership and purpose; how to weigh the cost-effectiveness of an outsourced model against the continuity risks of a single hire; how to tell the difference between a physical family office versus a virtual family office.
[See also: The Spear’s Wealth Management Indices 2026]
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The question of structure
One of the most persistent tensions in this space is between complexity and cost. A family office is not a product but an ecosystem, and its appropriate shape depends entirely on the family in question. Priyanka Hindocha, head of family office at Stonehage Fleming, is clear that for most families the question is not whether to have a family office but whether the structure they have – or are considering – is actually fit for purpose.
The firm’s outsourced CFO model, which provides coordination across a family’s full range of affairs without taking on investment management, typically makes sense for families with a net worth of around £150 million or above. Below that threshold, the cost and administrative burden tend to work against the purpose. A key advantage of the multi-family office model, Hindocha notes, is continuity: where a single hire can leave and take institutional knowledge with them, an outsourced structure maintains it.
[See also: Why outsourcing has become the defining question for modern family offices]
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Andra Ilie‘s team at HSBC Private Bank works across both sides of this question – helping families design their family office from scratch, and working with those who have a structure in place but need to professionalise it. A well-structured family office has clearly defined functions and a coherent governance model; a virtual one lacks both, and families often do not realise the difference until something goes wrong. Her team’s work is, she says, driven by a consistent priority: ‘What we’re trying to do every single time is be as impartial and as objective as possible.’ She also notes a meaningful shift among clients towards donor advised funds as a philanthropy vehicle – cheaper to run, more flexible and untethered from the operational complexity of a private foundation.
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 Banking & Investment Services
- Best Generational Wealth and Family Business Advisers
The role of independence
Where a bank-connected adviser must navigate the relationship between strategic counsel and institutional offering, independent consultants operate differently. Catherine Grum of Catherine Grum Consultancy works without a product to sell, which she finds is particularly valued by clients facing governance questions, where impartiality is essential. Her view of governance is not primarily structural. Grum describes it as a ‘human operating system’: the set of processes and relationships that determine how a family makes decisions and relates to one another. Many families, she observes, operate well without formal documentation but the process and alignment are no less critical for being informal. Her engagements rarely begin from a blank sheet; more often, a family comes to her during an evolution, already working with lawyers and investment advisers, and looking for someone who can hold the strategic picture together.
[See also: Family offices chase AI but governance and infrastructure lag]
John Russo of LS Private brings a different vantage point to the same territory. His clients are predominantly first-generation entrepreneurs who have had a business exit, typically with assets in the £30–£150 million range, and who need a central point of coordination across a complex web of private investments and legal structures. The family office, in his formulation, is not a fixed concept but a function, one that exists to prevent accountability gaps, protect clients from predatory influences and ensure that the family’s role as custodians of wealth is taken seriously across generations.
The professionals featured here are assessed by the Spear’s Research Unit on the full breadth of this discipline: strategic advisory, governance design, structure review, family communication and the operational depth required to navigate one of the most consequential decisions a wealthy family can make.
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- Methodology
- The best family office advisory & consultancy services: some names to know
- The best family office advisory & consultancy services: 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.
The best family office advisory & consultancy services: some names to know
Annamaria Koerling
- Focus: Strategic wealth advice
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: Delfin Private Office
Annamaria Koerling plied her trade at Cazenove and was head of wealth management at C. Hoare & Co. before co-founding Owl Private Office in 2016.
The firm subsequently underwent a ‘demerger’ to allow its key figures to specialise in the type of work and client base that suits them best. This gave rise to Delfin Private Office, ‘an overarching advisory business offering family office services to global families’, where Koerling is managing partner.
Anyone seeking to understand Koerling’s approach could do worse than pick up a copy of Spear’s magazine, where she writes a regular column that explores the issues affecting the markets and those who participate in them.
Read Annamaria Koerling’s full profile at Spears500.com
Catherine Grum
- Focus: Next-generation wealth planning
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: Catherine Grum Consultancy
Following roles at KPMG and BDO, Catherine Grum set up her own firm, Catherine Grum Consultancy, in 2023.
She tells Spear’s that the firm’s goal is ‘to advise wealthy individuals and families who are starting with quite a purposeful approach to their wealth – helping them to think through what it’s actually for, what their goals and dreams are, and then how that wealth supports them’.
One commonality among her clients is the need to plan for ‘succession in action’, including long-term wealth transfers and greater awareness across all family members of ‘what family governance means to them’. For Grum, one part of this is advising the next generation and acting as their counterpart rather than ‘their parents’ adviser’.
Read Catherine Grum’s full profile at Spears500.com
John Russo
- Focus: Family governance and oversight
- Ranking: Top Recommended
- Firm: LS Private
John Russo tells Spear’s he fell into the family office advisory space by chance, after being asked to set up a family investment company for a billionaire. He subsequently served as CEO of a prominent family office, and is now is one of the leading advisers for UHNW families in the UK and abroad.
As a managing director at LS Private, the family office arm of law firm Lawrence Stephens, he provides advice on ‘everything other than portfolio investments’ including the structuring of family offices, coordinating advisers, managing governance risk and serving as an educator for the next generation of wealth holders.
Read John Russo’s full profile at Spears500.com
Andra Ilie
- Focus: Family office structuring and governance
- Ranking: Top
- Firm: HSBC Private Bank
Andra Ilie, a senior adviser at HSBC Private Bank, advises multigenerational families seeking to establish a family office, as well as existing family offices and businesses on issues of professionalisation, structuring and governance.
This can range from writing family constitutions and making succession plans, to reviewing the efficiency of family offices and advising on philanthropic strategy after an inheritance, liquidity event or divorce. Her work is complemented by the wider HSBC ecosystem, and she can connect clients to investment and other private banking services when needed.
Read Andra Ilie’s full profile at Spears500.com
The best family office advisory & consultancy services: the complete list
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