Who should be the first hire in a new Family Office?

There is no universal first hire for a family office. Whether the right appointment is a Head of Family Office or Chief of Staff, an investment leader or a finance leader, depends on the mandate, the capability already in place, and the most immediate operational, investment or financial priority.

This article considers the main candidates for that first appointment, when each role may be appropriate, the risks to consider and how the options can be compared directly. It stays deliberately narrow. For the fuller sequence of building a family office team beyond the first appointment, see How to Build a High-Performing Family Office Team.

Families can sometimes begin the search with a title in mind, often because it is the title they have seen used elsewhere: CEO, Head of Family Office, CIO. That can put the process in the wrong order. The question that should come first is not what to call this person, but what is not currently being done, or not being done well, that needs a dedicated senior person inside the office.

For one family, that gap is investment oversight: assets have outgrown the informal arrangement with a private bank, and nobody inside the family is tracking allocation, manager selection or risk exposure full-time. For another, it is administrative and operational: bill payment, entity management, staff, property and family logistics have become too much for a part-time bookkeeper or an assistant borrowed from the operating business. For a third, it is governance: the family needs someone who can sit across investments, tax advisers, lawyers and the family council and keep those different strands connected.

UBS’s 2025 Global Family Office Report found that, when setting up a new family office, the first hire is most commonly an investment portfolio manager, but only 22% of respondents said so, rising to 29% among offices serving the second generation and below. Even the most common answer accounts for well under a quarter of cases.

Titles and remits vary considerably between family offices, and the same job title can carry very different authority from one family to the next.

Head of Family Office

A Head of Family Office, sometimes titled CEO, makes sense when the mandate is broad and undefined from day one: several functions need coordinating, the family wants one person clearly accountable, and no single technical discipline dominates. This works only if the role carries genuine authority over budget, staffing and external adviser relationships. Without genuine decision rights, the role risks becoming more coordinative than strategic.

Chief of Staff

A Chief of Staff fits when the principal needs someone managing their time, priorities and the interface between family, advisers and any operating businesses, while the technical functions – investment, tax, legal – are already being handled competently by external providers. In some offices the role stays close to principal support; in others it carries much broader authority, extending into investment or operational oversight. This can be confused with a senior EA role, which is one of the risks covered below.

An investment leader, CIO or Head of Investments

An investment leader is the right first hire when the immediate priority is investment oversight, a recent liquidity event, a growing and increasingly complex portfolio, or dissatisfaction with how external managers are being overseen. Citi’s 2024 Global Family Office Survey found that families with under $500 million in AUM were considerably less likely to have a CIO in place (39% reported no CIO, against 22% for larger families) and somewhat more likely to rely on an outsourced CIO (12% versus 8%). This suggests smaller or newer offices often delay this hire or outsource it rather than bring it in-house immediately, and both are legitimate paths.

CFO or Finance Director

A CFO or Finance Director should be the priority when financial control, reporting or consolidation across multiple vehicles is the most pressing gap. This is often the case where a family has significant business interests alongside personal wealth, or where several jurisdictions are creating reporting complexity that nobody inside the family is equipped to own. Eagle Private has seen this in a newly established London family office transitioning from a corporate structure following a significant liquidity event: with no existing team in place, the immediate priority was building the finance function, and we helped define the structure before any search began. Finance Director and Head of Tax searches ran in parallel once seniority and sequencing had been agreed, well before investment or operational hires were considered.

COO, Family Office Director, Senior EA or Operations Lead

An operations-focused hire, whether titled COO, Family Office Director or senior EA, is often correct when the family’s priority is the day-to-day running of households, properties, staff and logistics rather than investment strategy or financial control. This can be underestimated as a support hire rather than a leadership one; a senior EA or operations lead can carry as much scope and seniority as any other first appointment, depending on what the family needs it to cover. For lifestyle-heavy or multi-property families, operational complexity can be the single largest source of friction, and an unclear or poorly scoped role can create pressure across several other functions.

The first internal hire should be read alongside what is already outsourced, not decided in isolation. Where a function is already handled externally, the more urgent internal hire is often someone who governs that relationship, reviewing performance, challenging fees and holding the provider accountable.

EY’s research on family office operating models found that, among the offices surveyed, close to 40% of budgets were spent on outsourced services on average, and more than 90% of single-family offices already used, or were considering, co-sourcing for risk functions. These figures describe common practice among the offices surveyed rather than a single model that applies to every family office. What they do show is that outsourcing a function does not remove the need for internal ownership, and where outsourcing is already in place, the internal first hire is often chosen for governance and oversight rather than direct delivery.

“We saw this with a Singapore single family office we worked with,” says Izzy Boland, Co-Founder and Director, Eagle Private. “Investment execution already sat with an external discretionary manager, but no one inside the family owned that relationship or could evidence MAS’s* substance requirements. Rather than bring in a CIO, the first hire was a Head of Family Office focused on investment governance – execution stayed outsourced but oversight came in-house.”

The practical question to ask before any search is this: for each function that could plausibly be outsourced, who inside the family needs to own the relationship, read the reporting, and be accountable if it goes wrong? That person (rather than the function itself) is often the real first hire.

*Monetary Authority of Singapore

The first appointment does not usually fail because the family chose the “wrong” title. Problems are more likely to arise when the remit, authority or reporting structure has not been defined clearly enough before the search begins. The following are some of the most common risks to consider.

• Hiring for title, not mandate. A Head of Family Office is appointed because the family feels they should have one, without first defining what the role is meant to solve.
• Promoting a trusted assistant into an executive role. Loyalty and discretion matter, but they are not a substitute for the authority, judgement and technical range an executive role requires.
• Granting a title without decision rights. A Head of Family Office or COO is appointed, but the principal continues to make every material decision directly, leaving the new hire unable to act.
• Confusing a Chief of Staff with a senior EA. These are different roles with different scope, and treating them as interchangeable can create frustration on both sides.
• Sizing the structure to AUM alone. Wealth source, liquidity timing, jurisdictional spread, family involvement and outsourcing appetite all matter more than a single number.
• Skipping the reporting line conversation. Without early clarity on who the hire reports to, and how often they meet the principal, even a highly capable appointment can struggle.

These issues can be difficult to correct once the appointment has been made.

“We placed a Head of Family Office into a London single family office where the job role on paper covered budget, staffing and external adviser relationships,” says Izzy. “In practice, the principal continued signing off every decision personally, down to individual invoices. The Head of Family Office we placed was strong (exactly the calibre the family had asked for) but left within fourteen months out of frustration. The family came back to us for a second search, this time considerably more cautious, and it took longer to convince candidates the role was genuinely as senior as advertised.”