Northern Trust, one of the biggest financial services firms that manages $1.6 trillion in assets and is the custodian of many trillions of dollars more, is breaking down the walls of its global family and private investment offices group.
On Wednesday, the company announced plans to create a unit within that group called family office solutions, a collection of services for ultra-wealthy clients that does not require them to have a standalone office.
Northern Trust has one of the oldest family-office businesses. For 40 years, the firm has provided them asset services, such as banking, capital markets, custody and technology, as well as investment and wealth management. Today, the global family office services group manages $170 billion in assets for more than 500 clients (the average relationship is a little more than $1 billion) and it’s the custodian to over $800 billion of their assets — 14.5% of the total $5.5 trillion of family-office wealth globally.
Like the name suggests, that group was only for family offices. All other wealthy clients were served by Northern Trust’s more traditional wealth management business. But a growing number of super-wealthy families want or need some of the services commonly associated with offices, whether they already have one or not, and companies are quickly evolving to cater to them. Like Goldman Sachs, which launched a family-office platform in November to offer services à la carte, and a growing number of other private wealth managers, Northern Trust has, expectedly, done the same.
In the past, every Northern Trust client was forced to fit into either the global family and private investment offices group, also known as GFO, or the wealth management bucket. In the future, when a client doesn’t neatly fit into one or the other, family office solutions can help fill whatever gaps they have.
“Our biggest thing was breaking down that silo,” Pam Lucina, an executive vice president who will lead family office solutions at Northern Trust, told Modus.
As an attorney who has worked at an accounting firm, the law firm Mayer Brown, J.P. Morgan Private Bank, BNY Mellon, Lucina said she’s seen the needs of the wealthiest people through every lens. (Prior to her new role, she was the chief fiduciary officer at Northern Trust and spearheaded the creation of The Northern Trust Institute.)
Family office solutions will leverage the distinct strengths of the GFO group, such as family education, strategic philanthropy, foundation administration, and many others, along with the planning and strategy expertise of its wealth management advisors. Northern Trust Wealth Management manages a total of $450 billion in assets. GFO alone has more than 300 professionals working with families on investments, banking, asset servicing, technology and other areas.
Additionally, Lucina said she is sending out requests for proposals and considering strategic partnerships with companies to bolster the new offering. Potential clients also ask for things Northern Trust will outsource entirely, such as personal services or healthcare advice. “If a company is better because they singularly specialize in something, why would we recreate it?” Lucina said.
Family office solutions is hiring and especially interested in “expert generalists” who can be single points of contact for families and help them navigate all of Northern Trust as needed. According to Lucina, the advisor-to-client ratio will be low, keeping the level of service high while giving the solutions group an advantage over single-family offices.
“Iron sharpens iron. To be surrounded by all these experts makes you better at your job. To be working with other families, to have barometers to learn from, makes you, I think, more forward-thinking,” she said.
Some clients who suddenly become very wealthy aren’t sure if they want a family office or what it should be like. Other families have grown, and the subsequent generations don’t want to be as involved and might choose to outsource things. Family offices require financial commitment; the average office has 10 employees, and their costs can easily top several million dollars per year. But whether it's a temporary phase or one a client is entering more permanently, they want some of the perks of their extreme wealth.
“We used to make them decide before they came to us,” Lucina said. “I am excited about being able to be agnostic.”
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Other News
- Unless there is a specific, worthwhile angle for family-office professionals, Modus doesn’t cover markets much, even when stocks are barreling toward recession territory. I assume that Modus readers are well aware of falling share prices and ill-advised tariffs (armies of journalists, analysts, and others are flooding your inbox with this stuff already). How long can the trade war last? Who knows? I don’t read a ton of opinion essays, but this one by political consultant and adivsor Karl Rove made a good point: “Trump was elected to stop inflation” and if prices rise as expected in response to the tariffs, and Americans’ retirement accounts also take hit, they will want someone to pay a political price.
- Ethic, the VC-backed investment firm specializing in SMAs, raised a $64 million Series D round of funding this week entirely from State Street Global Advisors. I reported last year that 40 family offices and institutional investors accounted for most of Ethic’s growth to $5 billion in assets under management. The same remains true. Ethic added another billion dollars since then (some due to market appreciation, but primarily new assets) as the number of its family offices and institutions has doubled to 80, and they accounted for 60% of the growth, Ethic co-founder and CEO Doug Scott told Modus.
- Kent Lawson, the chief technology officer at Family Office Exchange (FOX), is now the chief operations officer. Before he joined FOX, Lawson co-founded and was the COO of KnowLedger, a software company that automates data entry into the general ledgers of family offices and other companies.
- Are hedge funds trading on your predictable quarterly rebalancing? Of course they are! And a new paper suggests it costs other investors $16 billion annually.
- Schroders published its short, quarterly Capital Private Equity Lens this week. Most people reading this newsletter know what’s going on in the asset class at a high level. But one of their takeaways worth noting was that the “less competitive small-mid buyout market offers strong potential for outperformance and value creation.” That’s good news for family offices, which, in most cases, are writing checks sized well for the investment funds targeting small-mid companies, and occasionally investing in those companies directly.
- Spring Break for the Teens of New York’s Elite: Sun, Fun and Networking.
Jobs
- Interplay, the investment, venture studio, and services firm, is looking for a family office investor to join its Acend group in New York. The multifamily office builds endowment-style portfolios for clients with venture capital, PE, private debt, and real estate funds, and invests directly in companies. Interplay is also looking for an estate planning advisor to work on a contract basis.
- A single-family office in Orange County, California, is looking for a chief financial officer.
- Tolleson Wealth Management, a multifamily office in Dallas, and started by the namesake family in 1997 as a single-family office, is hiring a portfolio management analyst and half a dozen other roles.
- A family office in Greenwich, Connecticut, wants to hire a “global travel planner/personal executive assistant” to work for two principals. The responsibilities are as usual: Thoughtfully creating and booking private jets and seats with commercial airlines, complex itineraries, resort accommodations, restaurants, and all transportation for the principals and sometimes family members. You’ll also collaborate with a personal assistant for their home, and an executive assistant who works for the principals’ operating company, on events, scheduled deliveries, occasional trips to their property in Manhattan, and personal errands.
- The owners of a Long Island beverage company are seeking a family office and human resources assistant to help streamline daily corporate and domestic operations and provide administrative and HR support.
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- On Tuesday, April 8, I’m joining Family Office List CEO Danielle Patterson and public relations and marketing consultant Michael Walsh for a live conversation about family offices, marketing and media. Join us if you can!
- Follow Modus on LinkedIn for occasional articles and updates between newsletters.
- Have a news tip for Modus? Send me an email. If the information is sensitive, use Signal on a personal device not accessible by your employer (for example, a mobile phone or computer disconnected from a company VPN).
Where I'll be...
- In the 330 for Easter.
- Then back to NYC.
A correction made on April 4, 2025: A previous version of this newsletter online incorrectly reported that Northern Trust's global family office services group manages $107 billion in assets, a number the firm shared with Modus. The group manages $170 billion in assets.
