Investments

Around what the money is actually for, rather than around a risk questionnaire.Two decisions define the approach. Allocation is driven by forward-looking return expectations rather than historical performance, because what an asset class returned over the last decade is a poor guide to what it is priced to return over the next one. And every decision is evaluated through a tax-aware lens, because for families of significant wealth the after-tax result is the only one that matters and it is frequently different from the pre-tax one.In practice most families benefit from splitting investable assets in two: a lifestyle portfolio sized against long-term cash flow simulation, and a legacy portfolio invested for the generations that will actually spend it. Held as one number, both are usually allocated correctly for neither.

As a planning question before an investment one.Capital calls are commitments. A family that has committed more than its liquid position comfortably supports has created an obligation that will eventually collide with a tax payment or a distribution, and the collision usually arrives at a bad moment in the market.So the first work is modeling the commitment against the rest of the balance sheet. After that, access is the other half of the question. Colony runs an independent, open-architecture platform, which means direct limited partnership access and negotiated minimums a single family would rarely reach alone, without being tied to proprietary product.

That the tax impact is weighed when a decision is made, not reviewed in December when the options have already narrowed.Concretely it covers asset location as well as asset allocation: the same security produces a different after-tax result depending on whether it sits in a taxable account, a retirement account, a grantor trust or a foundation.It also covers work most families do not know is available to them. Converting grantor trusts to non-grantor status can mitigate state income tax. Moving the primary place of trust administration to a more favorable state can do the same. Both depend on the document and the jurisdiction, and both are worth asking about.

Through consolidated reporting and the secure systems your family signs in to.Performance, holdings and balances are pulled together across every account, entity and trust into one view, rather than assembled from separate statements each quarter. Your family's documents sit alongside it.Reviews are built on top of that. The useful version starts with what changed in your family and asks what it means for the portfolio; performance is reported too, but it measures how the plan did rather than whether the plan is still right.