Firm Description
WE Family Offices is an award-winning, independent, client fee-only multi-family office. WE
provides strategic wealth advice to more than one hundred ultra-high net worth client
families with assets totaling more than $14 billion. As a strategic wealth advisor, our goal is
to empower our client families to be confident, competent and in control of their wealth. We
are a committed advocate for our clients’ long-term interests. WE has no financial interest
in our clients’ purchases or sales of particular financial or other products or services – our
aim is to offer our clients advice about their wealth that is truly independent. Our core values
are: Loyalty to Clients, Transparency, Passion to Serve, Professionalism, and Integrity.
The firm provides a range of family office services, including investment advice, to our client
families. WE advises our client families based on the concept they should manage their
financial and non-financial assets as a Wealth Enterprise. Our name, WE, is an abbreviation
of Wealth Enterprise. In our experience, the minority of families who are able to successfully
create, grow and enjoy their wealth in the present, and sustain their wealth across multiple
generations, do so because they manage the family’s wealth as a business enterprise. WE
calls this style of management a Wealth Enterprise. Our independent family office advisory
services are designed to help families successfully develop and manage their Wealth
Enterprises. We are on our families’ side, and no one else’s.
Principal Owners of WE
WE is an independent investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission (“SEC”)1 and is organized as a limited liability company under the laws of the
State of Florida.
WE Family Offices Holdings, LLC wholly owns WE Family Offices, LLC. Santiago Ulloa, Maria
Elena Lagomasino and Michael Zeuner are the principals of WE Family Offices, LLC and, along
with other partners in the firm, hold an ownership interest in WE Family Offices Holdings,
LLC.
Type of Services
WE provides boutique, customized family office services, including non-discretionary
investment advice, to more than seventy ultra-high net worth families. Our family office
1 From June of 2000 until August 2007, the registered adviser firm was known as TBK Investments, Inc.
Santiago Ulloa founded TBK Investments Inc. In August 2007, TBK Investments, Inc. was acquired by
GenSpring Holdings Inc. and converted to a limited liability company named GenSpring International, LLC.
Effective August 18, 2011, GenSpring International, LLC officially changed its name to GenSpring Family Offices
International, LLC. As of January 4, 2013, the firm was acquired from GenSpring, established as an independent
adviser firm with new ownership and control, and renamed WE Family Offices LLC.
advice and services are designed to make our clients confident and in control of the
complexities of their wealth enterprises. WE empowers our client families to successfully
manage their wealth enterprises by providing them with:
• Clearly communicated, actionable, and concise information, advice, and
recommendations;
• Subject-matter expertise and support across wealth management
disciplines, provided either in-house or through our network of providers;
• Access to high-quality investments and financial services;
• Coordination of clients’ “ecosystems” of professional and financial service
providers to ensure the family’s advisors are focused on their goals; and
• Administrative capabilities to organize and manage the detail and complexity of
UHNW-level wealth, including reporting at the enterprise level.
Our support and advocacy for wealthy families is founded on each of our client relationship
team members’ deep experience working at or with the world’s largest financial institutions,
which gives us the expertise to address our client families’ overall wealth management
needs.
WE provides our clients with information, advice and recommendations about matters
including asset allocation; portfolio construction; financial planning - including family
governance and succession planning; investment manager selection; service provider
selection; service provider fee and expense negotiation; investment transaction verification;
and consolidated asset and investment portfolio reporting. WE does not provide tax, legal
or accounting advice. Each of our clients is served by a team led by a designated Advisor,
and is supported by our in-house investment team, reconciliation group, other subject
matter experts and consultants we have retained to provide us with client-support services,
including investment advice.
As a non-discretionary investment adviser, WE does not have authority to make investment
decisions for our clients. Our clients receive information, advice and recommendations from
WE, but retain the authority and ultimate responsibility for all investment and investment-
related decisions, including securities trades, decisions about particular asset allocations and
portfolio composition, manager selection, and service provider selection.
In addition, WE does not have custody of our clients’ assets. Clients select the custodians of
their assets. WE may recommend a particular “global” or other custodian to our clients, at
their request, but we do not receive any compensation from the custodian or its affiliates for
such recommendations.
Overview of Services
WE’s investment advisory services consist primarily of: (1) assessing client needs and goals;
(2) financial planning designed to meet those goals; (3) developing an appropriate portfolio
asset allocation to achieve the client’s objectives; (4) implementing the asset allocation by
recommending or otherwise assisting in the client’s selection of: (a) particular investment
strategies (i.e., active, passive, alternative strategies); and (b) specific investment managers
or passive investment vehicles that employ those strategies; and (5) reviewing and
reassessing the client’s needs and goals, their investment portfolios, and repeating the
process on a regular, ongoing basis.
Our investment advisory services begin with a comprehensive assessment of the client’s
financial and
other circumstances to understand their needs and goals and their Wealth
Enterprise. WE advises client portfolios in accordance with each client’s investment
objectives, typically taking into consideration factors such as the client’s risk tolerance, time
horizon, tax issues, estate planning, liquidity and cash flow needs, any client-specific
restrictions or constraints, and other relevant information.
According to a client’s needs and goals, WE develops and recommends an appropriate
strategic portfolio asset allocation for the client. On a periodic basis, WE may recommend
tactical changes in those allocations to take advantage of conditions in the current economic
environment. These tactical asset allocation changes are typically short-term
underweighting or overweighting (as compared with the strategic allocations) of a particular
asset class or classes and are designed to capitalize on current economic or market trends
and conditions. Depending on a particular client’s needs and goals, or the nature of a
particular tactical tilt, WE may or may not recommend a particular tactical change in that
client’s asset allocation.
WE also recommends investment strategies associated with Values-Aligned Investing which
utilizes traditional financial measures as well as environmental, social and governance
factors into the portfolio management process. It also places importance on both the
financial return and the social and environmental impact of the portfolio. Our process begins
with helping clients define a Values-Aligned strategy that incorporates the client’s values as
well as their overall financial objectives and then continues with portfolio diagnostics,
selective sourcing, deep due diligence, portfolio implementation, continuous monitoring and
finally, bespoke reporting. We also work with clients to align client values to their
philanthropy through foundation investments and grant strategies.
To implement our recommended strategic and tactical asset allocations at the client portfolio
level, WE typically recommends particular strategies in each of the portfolio’s selected asset
classes. To execute these strategies, WE recommends only unaffiliated, third-party
investment managers, funds, and other investments that employ that strategy. Examples of
the kinds of investments WE recommends executing a given strategy include, without
limitation: mutual funds, exchange traded funds, limited partnerships such as hedge funds
or private equity, or managed accounts.
To evaluate the managers and funds WE recommends to our clients, WE employs both
quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify managers, funds and other investments
that are well-suited to our client’s investment and financial objectives. To support and
supplement the analysis and expertise provided by our own Investment Research Group, WE
has an agreement with an unaffiliated consultant investment adviser, LCG Associates, Inc., to
provide us with asset allocation and investment manager selection information and advice.
To the extent a WE client decides to invest with a manager or in a particular fund, those
managers and funds will have their own investment practices. Those investment practices
are described in each manager or fund’s Form ADV, or in its offering or other disclosure
documents. In addition, selected money managers or funds typically have discretion to
determine the type and amount of securities to be purchased or sold for the client for that
portion of the client’s assets managed by the money manager or fund.
WE does not receive compensation from, or have a sales interest in, any manager, fund or
other investment we recommend.
(Please refer to Item 8 of this Brochure, below, for a more complete description of our
investment advisory services)
Reporting Services
WE also provides consolidated portfolio reporting services for our clients’ Wealth
Enterprises. Clients who request that the Firm report on their investments and assets
receive a customized monthly “global” Consolidated Report. As a convenience to our clients,
in addition to reporting on clients’ financial assets, at a client’s request, the client’s
Consolidated Report may also include certain non-financial assets (e.g., real assets). In such
instances, WE relies on the client to provide current and accurate price or other valuation
information for those assets to be included in the client’s consolidated account report. WE
does not independently verify, and expressly disclaims responsibility for, the accuracy of any
non-financial asset values (including any portfolio performance including those values)
clients provide to us to include in their reporting.
Coordination of Clients’ Service Providers and Other Services
Depending on the needs of each client, services we can provide include:
- helping clients coordinate and manage the range of service providers that provide
services to them;
- helping clients decide which provider to use to execute particular transactions;
- transaction confirmation and review to ensure clients’ investments were executed
according to any agreed terms and pricing;
- investment pricing and transaction fee negotiation;
- helping clients work with their wealth planning and structuring professionals, in
single or multiple jurisdictions; and
- advice about family governance and next-generation education.
Wrap Fee Programs
WE does not participate in wrap fee programs.
Client Assets WE Manages
WE provides investment advice to our clients only on a non-discretionary basis. As of
December 31, 2023, client assets WE managed totaled $13,909,416,024. This total includes
client assets as to which WE has mandates to provide investment advice and family office
services and includes clients’ liquid and illiquid securities; cash and cash equivalents; and
certain of their other assets, including any family operating company interests and real
assets such as real estate.
In addition to these assets under management, WE has mandates to provide only
consolidated reporting for an additional $2,386,001,751 of assets, so that WE gives
investment advice or consolidated reports on $16,295,417,775 in client assets.