A business sale, health event, family transition or change in advisors can affect many aspects of an ultra-high-net-worth family’s financial and personal life.
The UHNW Institute’s new resource, The Catalysts Framework™: Understanding What Drives Change in Ultra-High-Net-Worth Families, examines the events and pressures that lead families to reassess priorities, structures, relationships and advisory support.
The framework identifies four categories of catalysts:
- External and environmental catalysts, including regulatory change, economic uncertainty, geopolitical events, and cybersecurity concerns
- Family catalysts, including life transitions, changing values, conflict, health concerns and succession
- Advisory catalysts, such as advisor retirement, declining service, poor coordination or a mismatch between a family’s needs and its advisory team
- Wealth catalysts, including liquidity events, inheritances, concentrated positions, investment changes and shifts in ownership
The paper also shows how catalysts can reveal needs across the Ten Domains of Family Wealth™, initiate work through the AIM Framework™ and shape the advisory model best suited to the family.
When several needs emerge at once and catalysts affect multiple areas of a family’s life with wealth, advisors must connect decisions across governance, investments, estate planning, philanthropy and family relationships.
Read the full paper here.
