Jonathan Fry, director of Fry Family Office, takes a different view of 'growth' from many of his competitors. The offering at his Yorkshire-based financial planning boutique, he says, cannot be mass-produced.

"We don't aim to have a lot of clients," he says. "Scaleability at our level of service is not easy. In the market, we're the private jet, not Easyjet."

The firm is, however, expanding in other ways, having taken on two actuaries, and a structured product specialist from Citigroup in the last few months.

It is also opening its second office in London, in the star-studded Primrose Hill area in the city's north-west, to complement its Berkeley Square presence. The second London base will complement a satellite office in Newcastle city centre and the firm's Richmond, North Yorkshire headquarters.

Fry Family Office boasts a client-base of 12 families with over £10 million in investible assets. Because the multi-family office does not insist on running its clients' money, Fry believes it offers truly independent and holistic wealth planning advice.

"Many HNW individuals are multi-banked. That's our experience, and unlike many of our competitors we're willing to work with existing managers. They're not our competitors and we don't seek to 'disintermediate' them."

"Many of our clients are grateful someone can go and see UBS or Coutts for them. Certain firms do selected activities very well. Why try and end that relationship?"

The Fry family office proposition offers clients three options: to work as an advisers for self-directed clients who are offered an execution-only service; in an advisory/managerial role with existing wealth manager(s); or a 'full' discretionary service, but where a third-party manager runs the money. The office aims to be a trusted adviser, project manager and administrator of its clients' affairs.

"Our clients are mainly investment-savvy wealth creators. What I term the 'Blackberry generation', typically in their 40s and 50s, who may be asset-rich but who are time-poor. Typically they'll have less of a framework of advisers than families with 'older' money. That's where we come in. We're enablers of our clients ideas, and inevitably messy lives. And our success is reflected in our growth: all our new business comes through recommendations"

"To say clients have lost faith in mainstream wealth managers is a truism. Never again will people trust banks as the sole providers of financial advice. Banks do not give holistic advice; they don't coordinate lawyers and accountants. We're not product-pushers, and our service is labour-intensive and truly bespoke."

Fry says his firm has a hybrid approach to fee-charging, and in this, as in everything, client's needs and wishes take precedence.

"The standard model of charging 1 percent of assets under management may appeal to some," he says "But it's not for everyone. Many of our clients prefer a base fee of say £25,000 a year. Or we can structure a fee based on the time we spend. That's all accounted for in our Omniview software already, which also fully discloses any income we receive to clients."

The central tool of the Fry Family Office offering is Omniview, a piece of administrative software designed as the name suggests, as a 'dashboard' to show clients the entirety of their assets in an easily digestable format, allowing them to be collated and analysed.

The creation of an Omniview profile forms part of the initial due diligence process and risk profiling of a client. It also serves as a repository of a clients' goals, and a tool for portfolio analysis.

As a new and comprehensive platform, I put it to Fry that Omniview could be marketed to a wider audience. Fry insists it's not on the cards at present. "A lot of Omniview can't be automated - scanning in things that could range from tax returns, Spanish wills, property deeds, school reports, updating less tangible asset values. It's like a piano keyboard: it needs musicians to play it."

In the current market climate, Fry agrees with Merrill Lynch's recent family office survey, that risk and due diligence have overtaken pure measures of investment performance as priorities when clients are choosing investment managers.

"We would decide asset allocation first, then introduce clients to appropriate investment managers, if they wish. We benchmark their performance and undertake detailed risk analysis. Proper due diligence is vitally important; the two actuaries who have joined us in recent months are expanding that area, and making sure the modelling and forecasting of clients' affairs is comprehensively achieved."

"Structured products are also hugely important in the current market. They're also highly complex and require real expertise. We've just taken on James Scott as a structured product specialist. He comes from the product development side at Citi, so he can go to the banks and understand what it is our clients are being offered."

Nor is the recruitment of Scott - a "real coup," according to Fry - the end of the firm's expansion plans. He insists that Fry Family Office will be taking on more 'major industry players' in the autumn, when the business also plans a formal launch for its Omniview plaftorm.

© 2009 Hester Plumridge - thewealthnet