The Typical Starting Point
Historically, a family office would often begin with the founder appointing a trusted advisor—an accountant, banking partner, or former CFO—to manage proceeds from a business sale. From there, the family office would expand as the family evolved in its ownership role, with new generations and investment areas being added.
A Growing Range of Services
The next phase of development usually occurs as the family, or the founder and their partner, adjusts to their new wealth. Tasks previously handled personally—such as travel planning, insurance oversight, property maintenance, and housekeeping—are gradually passed to the family office, which now must offer more than just investment management.
Once the transformation from investment company to full-service family office has taken place—offering both financial stewardship and support in everyday matters—owners are typically ready for the next stage: defining roles and involvement for family members. Some may engage in philanthropy, entrepreneurship, artistic endeavours, or hobbies that require the support and resources of the family office. Trust in the family office grows to the point where it also oversees the education and development of the next generation, as well as coordination of ownership through family meetings, holidays, and shared learning initiatives.
While the incremental approach—starting with investments and expanding according to the family’s evolving needs—has served many families well, another option is to proactively plan a structure based on the family’s future ambitions. Below, we review four common family office models: the Virtual Family Office, Embedded Family Office, Multi-Family Office, and Single-Family Office.
Virtual Family Office
A virtual family office allows families to outsource all or part of their operations in a highly cost-effective way. Staff are not necessarily co-located or even in the same time zone. The advisory team consists of individual specialists who can be engaged on demand. This model is less tailored and more transactional—fragmented and impersonal—but highly agile, enabling the family to activate or pause expert input as needed.
Embedded Family Office
An embedded family office is integrated within the family’s operating company or strategic asset, drawing on its competencies and resources. This can range from utilising a CFO to involving broader staff in serving the family. There are clear advantages to leveraging an existing organisation, but many families eventually outgrow this model as they require dedicated, ownership-specific expertise, and find it inefficient for employees to switch roles frequently.
Multi-Family Office
A multi-family office provides wealth management and other services to multiple affluent families. These offices tend to focus more on investment management and less on tailored services. Staff are often employed by a separate provider offering subscription-based services. This approach is more cost- and time-efficient but less bespoke. Sometimes, a multi-family office begins as a single-family office that later opens up to others to gain scale and access to more sophisticated investment opportunities.
Single-Family Office
The most common structure in Denmark, the single-family office begins with one trusted advisor in accounting, banking, or investments and grows to include a broader set of competencies. It is a standalone entity that serves one family with both financial and private services—such as philanthropy, owner advisory, and next-generation development. This model is the most customised, offering roles and even career paths to family members across generations.
When designing the structure of a family office, it is also important to consider strategic intent, meeting formats and frequency, and the distribution of competencies.
Read more about family office strategy [here] and about the evolution of family offices through history [here]. You are also welcome to contact us for a non-binding consultation on establishing or optimising your family office.
