Family Office or Wealth Manager at $20M? What the Data Shows

Family Office vs Wealth Management at $20M

At $20M the choice is rarely between a wealth manager and a family office of your own. It is between four ways of buying the same services: a wealth manager, a multi-family office, a team of specialists you coordinate yourself, or a dedicated office with its own staff. They differ less in what they can do than in how they are priced, and pricing is what decides the question at this level.

Source: Sources: wealth manager fee is the average AUM fee reported by advised respondents with $10M to $25M in net worth, Long Angle 2026 High-Net-Worth Asset Allocation Report, 233 respondents, average net worth $17M, fielded December 2025 to January 2026. Medians are for all respondents, not a wealth band, Long Angle 2025 High-Net-Worth Professional Services Report, 114 respondents, fielded August to September 2025. Own-office figure is Long Angle arithmetic on UBS Global Family Office Report 2025 running costs for offices managing $100M to $250M, excluding investment and banking fees. Respondents are Long Angle members who chose to take part, not a representative sample of high-net-worth households.

The last row is the one that settles most $20M decisions. A small team with a chief investment officer, a controller and tax and compliance support costs roughly the same whether it serves $20M or $160M, so its share of a $20M portfolio is several times what a wealth manager charges. Long Angle's guide to family office structures and their running costs works through the UBS figures behind it.

What Investors With $10M to $25M Use

Use of outside professionals rises with wealth, but at $20M most investors in Long Angle's data still buy services one at a time rather than through a single firm. In the 2025 Professional Services Report, 82% of respondents used a CPA or tax professional and 32% used a wealth manager. Wealth manager use rose from 22% of respondents under $5M to 44% of those at $25M or more, so even in the top band most did not have one.

Estate attorneys follow the same curve, and the report breaks them out by band:

Source: Long Angle 2025 High-Net-Worth Professional Services Report, 114 respondents, fielded August to September 2025. Respondents are Long Angle members who chose to take part, not a representative sample of high-net-worth households. The sample is below the 150-respondent level Long Angle uses for poll-led findings, and the report does not state the size of each band, so read these as directional.

The larger 2026 study points the same way: 57% of its 233 respondents manage their own portfolios, and only 14% have an advisor managing most or all of their assets. Whether a wealth manager earns its fee at a slightly lower tier is covered in are wealth advisors worth it at $15M, so this page does not repeat it.

How people find that team matters as much as which model they pick. In a 2026 Long Angle member poll of 116 respondents who had been through a liquidity event, 47% said they manage everything themselves, and 38% found their financial team through recommendations from peers, more than through online research or their existing professionals. The poll is small and select-all-that-apply, so treat it as context.

Why $20M Starts to Feel Like a Family Office Problem

The pull toward a family office at this level usually comes from paperwork, not from the portfolio's size. Between the $2M to $10M band and the $10M to $25M band, the share of net worth in private company equity rises from 6% to 16% in Long Angle's 2026 data, and the share in all private and alternative assets rises from about a quarter to almost a third.

Source: Long Angle 2026 High-Net-Worth Asset Allocation Report, 233 respondents, average net worth $17M, fielded December 2025 to January 2026. Respondents are Long Angle members who chose to take part, not a representative sample of high-net-worth households. Average share of net worth, a basis that includes home equity. All private and alternative assets combine private company equity, investment real estate and alternative investments.

Each private holding brings its own K-1, capital calls, distributions and entity paperwork. A wealth manager running a public market portfolio often does not touch any of it, and the coordination falls to you or your CPA. That gap, rather than the headline number, is what most people mean when they say they need a family office at $20M. It can usually be filled without building one.

What a Coordinated Team Costs at $20M

The wealth manager is usually the largest line, and it scales with assets unless you negotiate a flat fee. The 2026 study gives average AUM fees by net worth band, which put full management of $20M in the range below.

Source: Long Angle 2026 High-Net-Worth Asset Allocation Report, 233 respondents, average net worth $17M, fielded December 2025 to January 2026. Respondents are Long Angle members who chose to take part, not a representative sample of high-net-worth households. Net worth is used as a proxy for managed assets, and the report does not state the size of each band. $20M falls in the $10M to $25M band; the other rows show the range around it.

Specialists cost far less individually. Median annual spending in the 2025 report was $3,000 for a CPA, $5,000 for a trust and estate attorney and $10,000 for a wealth manager, across all wealth levels. Those medians are well below a full AUM fee because many respondents pay flat fees or have only part of their assets managed. A 2025 Long Angle member poll on tax preparation shows the spread for the CPA line on its own:

Source: Long Angle mini-benchmark poll, 350 respondents, posted October 2025, single-select, read 2026-10-06; latest vote October 2025. Respondents are Long Angle members who chose to take part, not a representative sample of high-net-worth households. Poll answers are not linked to net worth, so no figure here applies to a specific wealth tier.

A household with several private funds, a trust and an operating business will sit at the top of those ranges. Even so, the full stack at $20M (a CPA, an estate attorney on a project basis and a wealth manager on part of the portfolio) costs a fraction of a dedicated office's fixed overhead. Fee benchmarks by tier and fee type are on the wealth management fees page.

Family Office Services Without Building an Office

Members of Long Angle who have weighed this decision describe three ways of getting family-office-style coordination at this level, and the trade-offs they report with each.

• A multi-family office. Members who have used one describe the best as a coordinator across tax, estate and investments. Others found the service closer to a high-touch wealth manager with added access to private funds. Before signing, members ask whether the tax and legal professionals are in-house or outsourced, whether they are as good as the providers you already have, and who the firm's largest client families are, since they tend to set its priorities.
• An outsourced back office. Several members buy only the administration: collecting K-1s and subscription documents, tracking capital calls and distributions, bookkeeping and bill pay. Providers include CPA firms with bookkeeping teams and fractional controllers, and they typically price by complexity, meaning the number of entities, accounts, properties and private holdings. Members who self-manage investments often pair this with portfolio tracking software.
• Private bank bundles. Some private banks offer family-office-style services to clients above an asset or lending threshold. Members note these usually come with an asset-based relationship, so compare the bundled cost with buying the pieces separately.

A recurring caution in the same discussions: an advisor suggesting a family office entity mainly for tax reasons. Members who looked closely describe the deductibility case as narrower, costlier to set up and riskier than first presented. Take any such proposal to independent tax counsel before forming an entity. Members' experiences vary, and none of this is a recommendation of a particular firm or structure.

When a Dedicated Office Starts to Make Sense

A dedicated office tends to make sense when complexity, not net worth, outgrows what outside providers can coordinate: several operating businesses, many entities or trusts, family members in more than one country, or a family that wants central control and has someone willing to run what is effectively a small company. That is uncommon at $20M. For the full case on when building your own office makes sense, including what it costs and how such offices invest, see Long Angle's practitioner guide.

Below that point, the useful question is which functions to hand off first. For most households at $20M that order is tax and estate coordination, then back-office administration, and only then full investment management.

How to Decide at $20M: Six Questions

Six questions settle the decision for most families at this level:

• How many private holdings, entities and trusts do you have, and who tracks their paperwork today?
• What would each option cost in dollars a year, not as a percentage?
• Which functions do you want to keep, such as public market investing, and which do you want to hand off?
• Do your CPA, estate attorney and advisor talk to each other, or do you carry information between them?
• Is someone in the family willing to oversee staff and run an office, now and in ten years?
• If you are considering a multi-family office, have you checked its minimum, its fee in writing and who does the tax and legal work?

If the honest answers are a handful of private holdings, a straightforward estate plan and providers who coordinate well, a wealth manager or a set of specialists is the right size. If the answers point to many entities and no one to track them, start with an outsourced back office or a multi-family office before considering staff of your own. Estate coordination at this level is covered in high-net-worth estate planning, and choosing a CPA for a household with private holdings in high-net-worth accountants. The full study results are in the 2025 High-Net-Worth Professional Services Report and the 2026 High-Net-Worth Asset Allocation Report.