The business says it aims to transform the world's family office space as these organizations contend with cost pressures and a need to handle advancing challenges, such as embracing tech.

MyFO, a Canada-headquartered platform for family offices and the wealth management professionals who service them, has closed its oversubscribed $3.5 million seed funding round, led by Rhino Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Vancouver, Canada.

The funding round is designed to help the North America-based organization scale up its operations, widen product offerings and add team members, it said in a statement late last week. 

“Our mission is to transform how family offices operate by providing them a platform that balances cutting-edge technology with a deep understanding of our clients’ needs,”  Simrang Kang (pictured below), CEO and co-founder of MyFO, said. (Her co-founder is Jon Ricci.) “We’ve seen firsthand the challenges faced by family offices using outdated systems, and our goal is to streamline their operations while ensuring their data remains secure as it is paramount to them.”

Simran Kang

The firm cited figures showing that there are more than 7,000 family offices worldwide, holding more than $5.9 trillion of assets. In North America, there are around 1,700 such organizations. (Editor’s note: exact figures are hard to pin down, and contested.) The sector is sometimes considered to have outdated technology, although there has been progress in different types and sizes of wealth firms, as recently shown in this news service’s 12th technology and operations report. (More on these issues here and here from FWR's summit just over a week ago in New York.)

MyFO said it is addressing issues, such as high annual expenses for family offices that can reach up to $1 million – with a platform (example of dashboard below).

Example of the MyFO dashboard 

“While many tech companies are joining the AI-hype, MyFO remains focused on its goal of thoughtful innovation. Although the platform uses the advanced technology for tasks such as data ingestion, its primary goal is to deliver a secure and intuitive solution tailored to the unique needs of family offices, particularly those with heightened concerns about privacy and data security,” the firm said. MyFO said it is the “first tool to offer an omnipresent, end-to-end platform that integrates all aspects of family office management into one dashboard – designed to be both comprehensive and user-friendly.”

"MyFO is redefining how family offices manage their most cumbersome tasks by providing a streamlined, efficient solution. With only 16 per cent of family offices currently using a data aggregation tool, there is a clear gap in the market, highlighting both a lack of adequate solutions and significant dissatisfaction with existing options,” Jay Rhind, partner at Rhino Ventures, said. 

Traditional client onboarding can take up to 18 months, but MyFO says it can achieve this task in “a few hours.” 

The world’s family offices sector has grown rapidly in places such as Asia and the Middle East, as well as having expanded in its traditional redoubts such as the US and Western Europe. The sector is professionalizing and opening up to technology. For example, firms such as Eton Solutions, based in the US and formed by US family offices firm Eton Advisors, provides bill payment and related services, via technology, to the industry. 

(Family Wealth Report has interviewed Kang about MyFO and will add an article exploring the firm’s strategy in due course.)