RSM survey finds 55% of family offices have no succession plan

A majority of family offices have not written down who leads next. An RSM survey reported by The Family Office Professional found that 55% have no succession plan in place, and among the minority with one, only 37% hold a formal written document; 34% are working from an incomplete plan still under development, 20% rely on a verbally agreed arrangement, and 9% describe their arrangement as informal. Together those figures put a formal written plan at roughly one family office in six.

The absence of a plan becomes most visible inside a family that is already mid-handoff. The reporting, drawn from interviews with family office leaders and their advisers, describes the move from one family leader to the next as a period that can open new opportunities for some family members and lighter duties for others, and as one that becomes fraught when the family is not planning and communicating clearly. Two families that have been through it recently describe, in some detail, what kept the process orderly.

Andrew Bluestein's family office moved from first-generation to second-generation leadership with the founding generation stepping into a board-only role, and Bluestein, co-managing partner of Bluestein Ventures, credits two decisions. The family office defined roles and responsibilities across the organization, including the family board's remit, so everyone was aligned on how the office would operate before the handoff, and it set a full calendar of meetings a year in advance, giving the family a fixed schedule for when the board would engage.

A board-only seat keeps the outgoing principal inside the governance structure after the title changes hands, so the family's knowledge stays reachable by the board without operating authority staying where it has always been. Fixing a year of meetings in advance settles when the family board participates before anyone has a reason to contest it, and it commits the family to a schedule agreed while everyone was still aligned.

Joe Tracy's family reached a similar end by a different route: Tracy, chief executive of Dot Family Holdings, took over as chair when his brother recently stepped off the board, and his brother remains involved in the family office because he chairs two of the family's other businesses. Keeping family members around part time as they exit larger roles has helped, Tracy says, ensure smooth transitions in the family's largest business and in the family office. The family has hired a non-family chief financial officer and a new vice president of business development in recent years, a sign that the board-level handoff and the addition of outside executive talent are proceeding on parallel tracks rather than one waiting on the other.

In both accounts the departing leader keeps a role, and the reporting treats that as more than a courtesy. Staff who leave a family office are likely to move on to a different employer, so their departure is a clean break, while family members will still be around, which is what makes gradual transitions easier. An exit can be partial at a family office in a way it rarely is at an employer, spreading the risk of a handoff across months instead of concentrating it on a single date. The reporting attaches two requirements to a handoff that goes well: agreement on who holds which responsibilities and a transition planned with some overlap between leaders where possible.

The plan-holders split into four groups, with the largest at 37% holding a formal written document; the others live with less, and the categories fail differently. A verbal plan depends on the people who agreed to it recalling the same terms years later, an informal arrangement on the understanding persisting with nothing written down. A plan still under development at least has someone working on it.

The survey item does not specify what a succession plan is meant to cover. The publication reports the finding as a statement about family offices and does not say whether the question asked about the family's own leadership, the executive bench beneath it, or both. That distinction matters, since an office can hold a credible plan for replacing a chief investment officer and no answer at all for which family member takes the board chair.

The publication also does not give the survey's sample size, fieldwork dates or geographic reach, so the 55% describes the offices RSM polled and nothing wider. Nor does it say whether either family's arrangement is written down; what both accounts describe instead are the pieces a written plan would contain, among them named seats, a defined remit for the family board, a calendar of meetings, and a residual role for the person stepping back.

Bluestein's roles and calendar were set before his family office's handoff rather than after it. Whether either arrangement exists on paper, and whether the 34% of plan-holders whose plan is still under development finish it before the seats change hands, is the part the survey does not show.