Family members working in the family office: policies

Family members work in a minority of family office roles, concentrated at the top. Around a quarter of single family offices have a family member as CEO, far fewer have one as CFO or CIO, and the share falls as assets grow. Where family members are employed they are typically paid less than professionals in the same seat. Most families set entry standards for relatives who want to join; far fewer have written rules on pay, progression or exit.

How common family employment is

Morgan Stanley's 2025 Single Family Office Compensation Report found family members hold executive roles at 15% of all single family offices, rising to 33% of investment-focused offices. The CEO seat is the most likely to be family-held, at 27% overall and 53% among investment-focused offices; the CIO seat is family-held at 6% and 13%. The press release summarised this as family members being roughly twice as likely to hold the CEO and CIO positions where the office exists mainly to invest.

J.P. Morgan's 2024 Global Family Office Report, summarised by Caproasia, shows professionalisation rising with size. Non-family executives hold 63% of CEO seats, 100% of CFO seats and 87% of CIO seats at offices over $1bn, against 42%, 75% and 63% at offices between $50m and $500m. The KPMG and Agreus 2025 benchmark found 25% of ultimate beneficial owners act as CEO, 24% oversee from a board and 13% have no active role. Deloitte data cited by Egon Zehnder puts family hires at 18% of staff globally and 32% in Asia Pacific.

Pay parity

Morgan Stanley's 2025 report is the only benchmark to quantify the pay gap: family-member executives earn on average 63% of what non-family executives in comparable roles are paid. The discount reflects a mix of deliberate policy, where families pay relatives below market to avoid the appearance of extracting wealth through salary, and informal arrangements where the family member's main economic interest is ownership rather than pay. A single family office CFO quoted by Crain Currency in 2024 said the office could not afford to employ himself or his brother at rates comparable to what they could earn elsewhere.

Paying family below market creates its own problems. It blurs the signal to non-family staff about what the role is worth, and it makes the family member's position harder to assess on performance. Families that want the office to be a career for the next generation tend to move towards parity and put the difference into dividends or distributions, which is a reporting question as much as a pay one.

Entry criteria and progression

Survey data on family employment policies is thinner than on pay. A 2021 flash poll of 59 family enterprises by Banyan Global found 62% had set entry standards such as degrees or prior work experience, but only 21% believed they had established clear career paths for family members, 41% said family employees received useful developmental feedback, under half had an effective policy for compensating family members and around 20% had a defined approach for when a family member did not succeed. The sample is small and covers family businesses as well as offices, but it matches what advisers describe: entry rules are common, exit rules rare.

The typical written policy covers four things: a minimum qualification and a period of outside employment before joining; an open application against the same criteria as external candidates; pay set by the same benchmark as non-family staff and approved by someone other than the applicant's parent; and a reporting line to a non-family executive rather than to a relative. The reporting line matters most. A family member who reports to a parent cannot be managed; one who reports to the CEO can.

What the next generation wants

The demand side is weaker than families often assume. The 2024 Wharton Family Office Survey, reported by Knowledge at Wharton, found only 12% of offices expect the next generation to work in the family office, even where merit and policy criteria are met. UBS's Global Family Office Report 2025 found 59% of offices expect next-generation members to sit on the board, but only 31% expect them to take a management or executive role; philanthropy (44%) and strategic asset allocation (41%) were more common expectations. UBS's 2026 report found 45% of offices currently involve the next generation to some extent, and 27% have an organised process to prepare them.

Deloitte's 2024 trends report found 35% of office heads are non-family professionals today, expected to reach 49% after succession. The direction is towards family members on boards and committees and professionals in executive seats, which is why next-generation engagement is increasingly designed around governance roles rather than jobs. Financial education for heirs covers the preparation side.

Closing

The data describes offices becoming more professional at the executive level while keeping family control through the board. A written employment policy that sets entry standards, benchmarks pay to the market and routes reporting lines away from parents lets the few family members who do want to work in the office do so without undermining the professionals around them.