A profile of Sara Hamilton, one of the judges of Family Wealth Report's inaugural North America and Canadian awards in wealth management.

Family
Wealth Report is holding the inaugural North America and Canadian awards for
outstanding performance - at the institutional and individual level - in wealth
management in March 2014 (see full details here).

A crucial
part of the process of course is having a panel of expert judges with the
experience and knowledge to assess the entries. We will therefore be profiling
the judges taking part in coming weeks.

Here is
Sara Hamilton, chief executive and founder of Family Office Exchange. She
reflects, in her own words, on the characteristics of successful, 100-year
families and looks forward to serving the “clients of the future” in these
families in 2014 and beyond.

Over the
past 25 years at FOX, we have been fortunate enough to have worked with most of
the families who have not experienced “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three
generations’”.  It isn’t the size of the
fortune that determines a family’s ability to build a successful family
enterprise. The secret is recognizing that you have something worth pursuing
collectively and setting goals to maintain the private family capital for
multiple generations into the future.

Enterprise families understand that decisions
they make today impact the family, business, financial and philanthropic
capital for generations to come. Some of these families still own the operating
business and work hard to manage their roles within the family and the
business. Others are generations beyond the family business who have found
creative ways to foster bonds of affinity and entrepreneurship within the
family.

All of
these 100-year families have several things in common. Our research with Dr
Dennis Jaffe and the team at Wise Council in 2013 yielded the following
characteristics of families who have defied the odds:

·        
Shared purpose and
values: not just about the money

·        
Family community
across generations

·        
Professionally managed
business and financial activities

·        
Continual adaptation
and resiliency

·        
Free choice to remain
partners

·        
Active development of
human capital

·        
Commitment to give
back to the community

Every
family can be an enterprise family. The beauty of this approach is that it can
support the interests of all family stakeholders - with a lot of creativity,
flexibility and follow through on the part of the family.

As I think
about the next 25 years at FOX, I know that it is critical that we understand
the clients of the future within these families. These next generation family
members who have grown up with a global economy and 24/7 technology have
different expectations of their advisors and for their wealth. Our research in
this area in 2014 will help us support this next generation and their advisors
as they endeavor to construct their own 100-year
legacies.