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An international family office

Our international family office service aggregates the best experts from areas including wealth management, investment advice, tax and estate planning, corporate structuring and private banking.

All work together to simplify your life and get you where you want to go.

You'll get:

  • help making smart decisions with your money
  • help mitigating taxes
  • help protecting your assets
  • help taking care of your loved ones and the causes you care about
  • help making an impact within your community.

The family office service is ideal for wealthy expat families and business owners with complex financial situations, with a net worth starting around $10 million, who desire a comprehensive and holistic international family office approach to their finances and life.

In particular, you'll likely prevent the common seepage of wealth to the Private Banks, esoteric investment 'opportunities' or a lifestyle of poorly controlled/escalating costs.

You'll feel a greater sense of clarity, confidence and control over your ideal future.

This is a problem-solving, possibility-capturing partnership entirely focused upon ensuring you get wise counsel and live an amazing life of significance.

Why family wealth management is essential for preserving your legacy

Families often engage a family office when their assets have grown to a size where full-time professional management is required or could be beneficial.

The purpose of the family office is to secure a dynastic legacy and protect and enhance established wealth across generations.

The family office invests the family’s money, manages all of the family’s assets, and disburses payments to family members as directed.

In short, it will stop the leakage of wealth which, when compounded over time, can lose millions of dollars.

The decision to engage a family office is an important and personal one because it should be a long-term relationship based on deep trust, integrity and understanding of the family, the assets it controls and the family’s future intentions and wishes.

What is a multi family office and how does it work in Dubai?

A family office acts as a personal Chief Financial Officer or Chief Adviser to successful families, and this type of arrangement has its origins in wealthy 19th-century European and American families. There are believed to be many thousands of family office services in existence globally, at least half of which were set up in the last 20 years. The increasing concentration of wealth held by very wealthy families and rising globalisation are fueling their growth.

The family office is a business run by, and for, a single family. It has a dedicated team of professionals who oversee and manage the complete financial affairs of the family with unbiased advice and objectivity that is simply not possible to achieve through private banks, fund managers, or other financial institutions who are all working in the interests of others, like their shareholders. A family office arrangement should be wholly independent and be funded by the family so that it only works in the interests of the family. There will be an alignment of interests between financial advisers and the family, compared to external advisers who, for example, work for a bank or financial institution where interests conflict and cannot be aligned.

Family offices offer a wide range of services, including wealth management, tax planning, estate and succession planning, philanthropy coordination, legal support, concierge services, and family governance. They provide a holistic approach to managing family wealth, ensuring long-term financial security and legacy preservation.

Dubai has emerged as a leading global hub for family office advisory services due to its favorable regulatory framework, tax efficiency, economic stability, and strategic location between Europe, Asia, and Africa. The city offers several advantages for setting up a family office, including world-class financial services, a business-friendly environment, and attractive residency options through investor and entrepreneur visa programs.

Key benefits of multi family office wealth management in Dubai

Comprehensive financial life management: a tailored plan for your family's financial affairs, encompassing investments, wealth transfer, tax planning, and optimal ownership structures.

Holistic risk management: protection from potential risks, including disjointed asset allocations, currency fluctuations, and tax or structuring concerns.

Strategic investment oversight: A well-defined investment policy with careful selection of a globally diversified portfolio, and consolidated performance reporting.

Enhanced returns & lower costs: potential for higher returns and reduced risks through the aggregation of investments, leveraging debt mandates, and pooling resources for cost savings.

Time-saving & simplified complexity: a dedicated family office to oversee and coordinate all aspects of your integrated financial life strategy.

Cost efficiency: savings from pooled purchasing power for professional services, ensuring optimal value.

Professional coordination: coordination among legal, financial, investment, and insurance advisers to align with your family’s goals.

Philanthropy planning: a strategic approach to family philanthropy, ensuring your legacy and values are upheld.

Succession security: assurance that if the primary decision-maker is unavailable, a trusted team will manage your wealth for future generations.

Personalised service: proactive, highly responsive service from a boutique, employee-owned firm committed to your family’s needs.

Real-time asset auditing: continuous audit of all global assets under management, providing complete transparency and control.

How family office management services help ultra-high-net-worth individuals in Dubai

The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) offer dedicated frameworks for family offices, providing regulatory certainty, asset protection, and access to international financial markets. These jurisdictions enable families to structure their wealth with privacy, legal protection, and operational flexibility. Additionally, Dubai's robust banking sector, world-class infrastructure, and lifestyle amenities make it an ideal base for affluent families to manage their financial operations.

By establishing a family office in Dubai, families enjoy a tax-efficient environment with no personal income tax, capital gains tax, or inheritance tax. Dubai’s focus on innovation and digital transformation also allows family offices to utilise cutting-edge financial technologies, ensuring efficient and secure wealth management. The city’s cosmopolitan atmosphere and emphasis on premium living standards further enhance its appeal to wealthy families seeking to secure their financial future while enjoying an exceptional lifestyle.

Overall, family offices in Dubai provide ultra-high-net-worth individuals with a tailored, independent, and professional approach to wealth management, fostering long-term growth, stability, and intergenerational continuity.

Read more

1. How to protect your family's financial future

2. How to achieve financial stability while living abroad

3. How affluent families can optimize their financial future

Why choose family office services for wealth preservation?

Protecting generational wealth through strategic planning

Research shows that many wealthy families are unable to preserve their wealth beyond three generations, often due to a lack of strategy or communication within the family. A family office can bridge this gap, fostering long-term relationships with all family members and educating younger generations to help protect and preserve generational wealth. As a neutral third party, it can often be easier for family members to work with the family office rather than directly with one another, especially during complex wealth transitions.

Integrating investment, tax, and estate planning in a family office

As specialists in cross-border, international, offshore, and multi jurisdictional financial planning and the accompanying tax, legal and regulatory complexity, family offices and their professional connections have deep experience and trusted expertise.

Careful analysis and preparation are always required to ensure you avoid making any expensive mistakes around tax and estate planning.

The challenge is that while creating sufficient resources to provide financial security is difficult, the process of effectively stewarding wealth for the benefit of future generations and endeavours you value, is fraught by innumerable obstacles.

Many things can impede the transfer of wealth in a manner that’s both aligned with your values and optimally benefits family and society.

Developing an effective and well-balanced estate plan as a family office is complicated, takes time, and can require uncomfortable decisions. Not planning properly can result in excess taxes, family conflict, and unnecessary risk.

As part of our multi family office service, AES helps well-established families preserve, protect, and transfer wealth through comprehensive integration of investments, tax and estate planning.

The role of fiduciary services in a multi family office

Fiduciary basically means trusted.

Fiduciary services play a crucial role in a multi-family office by ensuring the highest standards of trust, transparency, and wealth protection.

It encompasses estate planning, asset structuring, trust management, and corporate governance, helping wealthy families safeguard their wealth across generations.

By acting in the best interests of clients, fiduciary professionals provide expert guidance on regulatory compliance, tax efficiency, and risk management.

In the UAE, the role of fiduciary services in a multi-family office is to help navigate complex global financial landscapes while maintaining confidentiality and control. This strategic approach ensures long-term financial security and seamless wealth transfer for affluent families.

AES was the first and remains the only firm in the AMEA (Asia, the Middle East and Africa) region to meet this standard of excellence.

How to select the right family office management service

The establishment of a family office in Dubai is critical for the effective preservation and future enhancement of a family's wealth. As the decision to set up a family office is often made only once in a lifetime, the creation process is of utmost importance. The selection of the jurisdiction and staff should be made with great care, as your family's future wealth and fortune will depend on these choices.

Strong relationships are built over time between family members and the family office staff. Eventually, a family office becomes a trusted adviser on personal matters, not just corporate ones. This is because the family office is involved in managing family assets and making key decisions on structuring investments to ensure protection, privacy, and tax effectiveness. It may also play a role in the family’s holding company, and guiding future generations strengthens this relationship further.

Above all, integrity and trust between the family founder and the family office are paramount for a successful partnership, ensuring that wealth is managed effectively and transferred smoothly across generations.

Factors to consider when choosing a multi family office in Dubai

Reputation: does tthe family office have a strong reputation and proven experience in managing wealth for ultra-high-net-worth expat families? Can they provide references from other high net worth individuals and affluent families for you to speak to?

Fiduciary: are they a certified fiduciary and have their client’s best interest at heart when acting on their behalf, with loyalty and care forming the foundations of their fiduciary duty?

Expertise: do they have the qualifications, experience, specialisations in areas such as tax, legal, investment, and estate planning?

Regulated: are they compliant with Dubai’s laws and other international financial regulations?

Personalised: are the services bespoke solutions tailored to your specific financial needs and goals?

Global: does the family office have international expertise and connections to manage global assets and investments efficiently?

Tax: what are their strategies for optimising tax planning, ensuring that your family’s wealth is structured in the most tax-efficient way possible?

Succession and estate planning: can the family office handle complex estate planning, helping to preserve wealth across generations and align with the legacy you want for your family?

Risk: what is the family office’s approach to mitigating financial risks, including asset protection, insurance, and compliance with global tax treaties?

Reporting: what are their technological capabilities like to provide you with transparent, real-time reporting and the option to track and manage your wealth in real time?

Trust: do they truly value integrity, privacy, and discretion, ensuring your wealth and personal matters are handled with the utmost confidentiality?

Understanding the differences between single and multi family office services

Single-family offices are bespoke wealth management firms dedicated to a single high-net-worth family, offering personalised financial planning, investment management, and estate structuring. They provide complete control and confidentiality but require significant resources to operate.

In contrast, multi-family offices serve multiple wealthy families, pooling expertise and resources to offer a broader range of financial services at a lower cost. They provide access to experienced advisers, diversified investment opportunities, and shared infrastructure while maintaining a high level of service.

Choosing between the two depends on the complexity of your financial needs, desired level of control, and cost considerations.

The importance of transparency and independent wealth advisory

Independent wealth advice, investment management and financial planning are the fundamentals for family office services. Any relationship should be based on a premise of transparency, integrity and treating clients fairly.

Any family office service should be clear and transparent on their fees/charges, investment approach and any potential conflicts of interest. One of the problems people face when choosing a family office is a lack of transparency. It should be easy, for example, to work out exactly how much you’ll pay, when and why.

Understanding multi family office services in Dubai

International family office

A hub of knowledge, experience and operational capability, which can support the requirements of the family across the whole range of their affairs, from long-term planning to routine transactions and administration.

Legal and tax advisory

Bringing exceptional experience to wealthy international families, providing advice on long-term tax planning and structuring solutions, as well as ensuring day-to-day transactions are properly scrutinised for their tax and regulatory implications.

Expert fiduciary

A full range of cross-jurisdictional fiduciary services including trusteeship, directorship, company secretarial, administration, nominee services and executorships. Our extensive commercial experience equips us to handle an exceptionally wide range of assets.

Wealth planning

Integrated planning and investment advice focused on cross-border/international family members. Clients benefit from advice across a full range of tax efficient structures and investments to support their financial and intergenerational goals.

Private banking and professional advice

Our private banking and professional advisers services form part of a wider risk management strategy, covering the whole spectrum of family circumstances. Our independence means we can source the most appropriate provider for our clients.

Governance and succession

Supporting client families in succession planning and family governance is core to our service offering. It is an integral part of almost everything we do and is a crucial consideration in major decisions.

Investment management

Drawing on extensive resources and expertise,
we invest on a discretionary or advisory basis across the full range of asset classes. We always adapt our investment approach to the wider circumstances of the family

Dealing and treasury

A comprehensive service to handle all the family’s banking and investment administration, including cash management, deal execution and custody. Our system enables us to spread banking counterparty risks across a number of prime institutions.

Property advisory

We advise and act for clients in all matters relating to residential property, particularly in prime residential, commercial and hotels.
We support clients with acquisitions and disposals, manage existing properties and offer a private property search service.

Family business advisory

We assist families in all matters relating to the ownership of family businesses, including succession planning and governance, structuring and fiduciary services, risk management, and a breadth of corporate finance advice

Corporate services

A bespoke service designed to help clients navigate the world’s increasingly complicated legal and regulatory environment in order to create innovative and effective corporate structures.

Expert reporting

We provide comprehensive online reporting across a client’s entire asset base. Intelligence and technology combine to provide the insight and visibility needed to make effective decisions about family wealth.

Family office Dubai – a hub for global wealth management

Why Dubai is the preferred destination for family office services

Dubai offers an ideal environment for family offices, with frameworks like the DIFC and ADGM providing regulatory certainty, asset protection, and easy access to global financial markets. These areas allow families to access private wealth management with privacy and flexibility. Plus, Dubai’s top-tier banking sector, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and high-end lifestyle amenities are making it increasingly desireable for expats.

Setting up a family office in Dubai also means benefiting from an offshore tax-friendly environment, with no personal income, capital gains, or inheritance tax. The city’s focus on innovation means family offices can use cutting-edge financial tech for efficient and secure wealth management. On top of that, Dubai’s vibrant lifestyle and world-class living standards attract families looking to secure their future while enjoying an exceptional quality of life.

Tax benefits and asset protection strategies for international families

For international families in the UAE, managing tax obligations and protecting assets is essential in a tax-friendly environment. With no personal income tax, capital gains tax, or inheritance tax, the UAE offers significant tax benefits. Wealthy families using a multi family office service in Dubai can leverage offshore structures, such as trusts, holding companies, or foundations, to optimise tax efficiency while protecting wealth.

Asset protection strategies, including using legal frameworks in the UAE’s secure jurisdictions like DIFC and ADGM, help safeguard wealth from risks such as litigation or political instability. These strategies ensure long-term wealth preservation, compliance with international regulations, and privacy for family members.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why use AES for family office services?

For those who have generated great wealth - it can be extremely challenging retaining it.

Plans for preserving your family wealth should often take a very long-term view - potentially up to 100 years. 

Success requires far more than financial capital - an investment in human and intellectual capital.

This requires a focus on physical and emotional well-being, education and life experience. 

AES specialise in international family office services to wealthy families who require advice in excess of normal governance structures. 

We're about ensuring your family is 'on purpose' - healthy, happy and prosperous - in our experience, a rarity amongst many wealthy families.

We question the assumption that wealth management is primarily about investment products or standardised portfolios.  Instead, we believe investments are best managed as part of an integrated, intergenerational approach, encompassing the entirety of a family’s wealth. 

For us, investment decisions should be seen through the lens of the family as a whole, drawing on a deep and detailed understanding of family circumstances. We appreciate that many entrepreneurial clients have a highly personal approach to investment risk, which is often significantly at odds with traditional asset managers. So we have developed an approach to risk that bridges the gap between accepted investment theory and the broader perspective of the entrepreneur.

How do you work with clients?

Investment decisions rarely take place in a vacuum.  Like most of our clients with complex financial affairs, you'll likely need to consider all manner of other issues including tax, legacy issues and legal consequences. That requires a real commitment to collaboration which is unfortunately all too rare.

We see true wealth management as so much more than just portfolio management. We see it as the combination of:

Investment Consulting – determining your risk required risk tolerance and risk capacity.

Strategic Planning – Wealth enhancement, wealth protection, wealth transfer, and generosity.

Relationship Management –  integration with your other professionals such as accountants, lawyers, private bankers and real estate professionals etc.

We also have our own network to ensure we can find an expert to help you resolve any issue with financial implications you encounter.

Can I get help with a specific need?

A lot of thought and planning needs to go into what activities are required. However, when set up and run properly the multi-family office is a perfect vehicle for managing and preserving personal wealth for successive generations.

Each family or individuals’ requirements are different so every family office needs a bespoke structure designed to meet their unique and specific needs.

Examples of the sort of work carried out by a multi-family office can include:

  • Property management
  • Real estate development activity
  • Succession planning
  • Employment of household staff
  • Centralisation of resources
  • Co-ordinating tax, legal and investment advice
  • Organisation family security, vacation and business travel arrangements
  • Family governance
  • Trust and company administration
  • Monitoring investment management performance
  • Coordinating investment policies with regard to private equity, venture capital and philanthropy

The important thing to remember is that this is a vehicle designed by a family to look after your assets and interests with a core objective of preservation and where possible enhancement of those assets for the benefit and enjoyment of your family members.

The benefits of such a structure are numerous and include administration, consultancy and investment services carried out free of conflicts-of-interest.

The ability to have a continuous and on-going regular contact between family and skilled employees dedicated to providing solutions to their requirements.

Above all, the multi-family office provides a structure that gives the client a comprehensive oversight and management of personal assets, freeing themselves up to explore other interests knowing that someone is managing/monitoring the family’s business interests on a day to day basis.

Who do you help?

Wealth is international. Our clients are global citizens. So we are an international business. Even those clients who are based primarily in their home country value the advice we bring from an international perspective, with access to contacts and investment opportunities worldwide.

We have moved across borders as our clients and their interests have expanded, and our expertise has similarly grown with our clients’ requirements.

Cross-border living and cross-border investment calls for cross border knowledge and we can offer specialist advice about the tax and legal implications of international lifestyles.

Our attitude, culture and philosophy are shaped by the combination of deep roots in local communities and a modern international outlook.

What questions can you answer?

The types of questions we help families answer:

Does your family share a vision and a purpose for your family wealth?

What are your ambitions and concerns for the family business?

Are there assets that depend heavily on your personal expertise?

How can you demonstrate your values through the investments you make?

How are you preparing those who will inherit?

Have you discussed the practicalities of the transition?

How is family leadership determined?

What values do you want to instil in future generations?

What are the risks to your family and your family’s long-term wealth?

Do you want your wealth to promote and support good causes?

What's the difference between a family office vs wealth management?

Family offices are private wealth management advisory firms that serve ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) investors. They are different from traditional wealth management shops in that they offer a total outsourced solution to managing the financial and investment side of an affluent individual or family. For example, many family offices offer budgetinginsurance, charitable giving, family-owned business, wealth transfer, and tax services.

What's the difference between a single or multi-family office?

Single-family offices serve one individual and their family, while multi-family offices serve a few families benefiting from economies of scale.

 

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