Family-office structure and alternatives
Family offices are how the largest allocators run capital. The structure — sleeved allocations, defined risk budgets, and disciplined manager selection — is worth borrowing at any scale.
How a family office is organised
A single-family office (SFO) manages the wealth of one family and typically employs a chief investment officer, tax counsel, and operations staff. A multi-family office (MFO) serves several families and pools infrastructure. Both structures exist to separate governance (what the family wants) from execution (how it gets done).
The sleeve model
Liquidity sleeve — cash and short-duration bonds sized to fund 1–3 years of family spending.
Growth sleeve — global equities, held through cycles.
Alternatives sleeve — hedge funds, private equity, real estate, commodities, and defined yield strategies.
Legacy sleeve — long-horizon holdings intended to compound across generations.
Risk budgeting
Family offices assign a risk budget (measured in expected volatility or Value-at-Risk contribution) to each sleeve, and to each strategy inside the alternatives sleeve. No single line item is allowed to consume more than its allotted risk. That discipline is what allows the whole portfolio to keep functioning when any one strategy has a bad year.
Manager selection discipline
Before allocating to a manager, family offices verify: regulatory status of the entity, custody arrangements, source of edge (why does the strategy make money), risk controls (what stops a bad month becoming a fatal one), and reporting cadence. This is exactly the same due-diligence check a smaller allocator should apply to the Vision Bank programme — or to any yield product.
Borrowing the discipline at smaller scale
Define your sleeves in writing. Even a €500,000 portfolio benefits from an explicit split between liquidity, growth, and alternatives.
Set a risk budget for each strategy. Decide the maximum you would allocate to any one manager and stick to it.
Diarise reviews. Family offices formally review each holding at set intervals; solo investors rarely do, and it costs them.
Separate custody from execution. Prefer strategies where the assets sit with a regulated custodian, not with the trading desk itself.
Where the Vision Bank programme fits
Inside the alternatives sleeve, sized to a defined risk budget, alongside — not instead of — other diversifiers. The programme is a single line item, not a portfolio.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need a family office to allocate?
- No. The programme is open to individual and entity allocators from the €1,000 starter tier upwards. Family-office structuring is a lens for how to think about sizing, not a requirement to invest.
- What is the alternatives sleeve?
- Alternatives are everything outside cash, listed equities, and investment-grade bonds — hedge funds, private equity, real estate, commodities, and defined yield strategies like this one.
- How much do family offices allocate to alternatives?
- Reported ranges vary widely, but many multi-family offices report alternatives sleeves of 20%–40% of total assets, weighted toward long-horizon capital.
See the programme
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