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6 February 2025
Rick Caruso
Source: Wikimedia
The owner of the Palisades Village Mall is Rick Caruso, a real estate developer with a net worth of approximately $5.8B according to Forbes. As the fire approached his property, he hired a team of firefighters – with their own trucks with hundreds gallons of water – to protect it. The decision was successful; the buildings in the shopping village were some of the only ones left standing in the vicinity.
In 2022 Caruso ran for Mayor of Los Angeles. He lost to current Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, whom many commentators believe mismanaged the city’s preparations to prevent the recent devastation. It is widely believed that many of the fire hydrants in the districts worst affected by the disaster ran dry.
UHNWIs frequently turn to private providers for essential services, often starting with familiar areas like healthcare, personal security, and education. Increasingly, however, they are recognizing the importance of a more comprehensive approach that encompasses services traditionally provided by governments such as firefighting – highlighted by the recent Los Angeles wildfire – utilities, disaster preparedness, and environmental monitoring/protection. More information on private-sector services covering these areas is below.
Public firefighting services are typically the first line of defense against fires, relying on publicly funded fire departments and infrastructure. However, during large-scale incidents or in areas with limited public resources, private firefighting services can provide critical supplemental support.
According to the National Wildfire Suppression Association, an American organization with over 300 members providing fire safety services, over 40% of firefighters in the United States are employed in the private sector. Information on private-sector firefighting in Europe is more limited, but several companies like Danish multinational Falck are active in the sector – primarily serving as government contractors. In the United States, it is more common for private firefighting companies to serve insurance companies and occasionally wealthy individuals in addition to governments.
For UHNWIs, private firefighting services can offer several key advantages:
Specialized equipment and expertise. Private companies may possess specialized equipment or expertise in areas such as wildfire suppression or high-value asset protection.
Governments typically play a significant role in the provision of essential utilities like electricity, water, and sewage treatment. Utility companies often operate as regulated monopolies, ensuring consistent service and managing large-scale infrastructure. However, for UHNWIs seeking greater control and resilience, private utility solutions offer compelling alternatives.
While contracting a completely independent, large-scale private utility provider is generally not feasible due to infrastructure requirements and regulatory constraints, UHNWIs can achieve significant independence through:
These solutions not only enhance resilience but can also contribute to sustainability goals and reduce long-term operating costs.
Government agencies typically provide disaster preparedness information, evacuation orders, and emergency shelters during large-scale events. However, for UHNWIs, a more comprehensive and personalized approach to disaster preparedness can significantly mitigate risks.
Private disaster preparedness services can include:
These proactive measures can provide peace of mind and significantly enhance safety and security during emergencies.
Growing awareness of environmental risks and increasing emphasis on environmental, social, and governance factors are driving demand for private environmental monitoring and protection services. These services address concerns related to personal health, regulatory compliance, and responsible environmental stewardship.
Private options include:
Investing in these services not only protects personal health and property value but also demonstrates a commitment to environmental responsibility, aligning with the growing global focus on sustainable practices.
Typically, resilience-oriented investments like those outlined above will be linked to specific assets, especially real estate holdings. For example, a contract with a private firefighting company will concern a specific property to be protected. The expenditure should therefore be factored into cashflow or upkeep calculations for the property. The Altoo Wealth Platform can make the process of keeping these records – and all records associated with the property – fast and easy, with all figures clearly presented and available for analysis in intuitive dashboards. The service contract itself can also be digitally stored alongside other important documentation regarding the property like insurance policies and rental agreements.
To learn more, please contact us for a demo!
5 February 2025
Protecting physical collectibles from physical damage typically involves using some form of structure with special features. For example, art collections can be kept in climate-controlled environments with sensors to detect rising ambient moisture levels. Even so, a natural disaster like a wildfire, flood, or earthquake can put any such structure at an exponentially higher risk of being compromised.
For smaller collectibles like rare coins, it is possible to invest in structures like safes that can survive almost anything nature can throw at it. But for larger (and larger collections of) collectibles like luxury cars, it is often impractical to take such measures. Also, the owners of such valuable items typically prefer to keep them on display – not locked away – to be enjoyed by themselves and guests.
For UHNWIs with a global mindset, a more practical approach will likely be to collect valuables in homes in geographical areas that are statistically unlikely to be affected by the most destructive natural disasters. Here are recommendations for identifying such areas, assuming that wealthy individuals will prefer to own homes in reasonably prosperous and well-populated metropolitan centers.
The natural disasters and extreme weather most likely to obliterate houses include:
While the 2024 World Risk Report and older – yet valid, as meteorological and geological patterns are relatively stable – research from insurer Swiss Re address the global risks of natural disasters, such information will likely be an imperfect tool for UHWNIs aiming to disaster-proof their collections.
The World Risk Report tends to focus on countries as opposed to cities. This approach is effective for smaller countries, but whether it is effective for larger countries like the United States – where risk profiles differ significantly from the east to west coasts – is questionable.
Swiss Re’s research takes a rather more city-centric approach but also focuses on rather broad factors like productivity losses due to employees being out of the office. While such things do matter to UHNWIs and everyone else with a stake in a given economy, the research tends not to parse out issues like damage to collectibles owned by an area’s wealthiest residents.
Despite its shortcomings, this research can lead UHNWIs to make some broad conclusions:
Comparing all of the information presented so far in this article with research from Henley & Partners on millionaires’ favorite places to live, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, and Geneva might be ideal cities in Europe for keeping collections. Geneva seems to be particularly appealing; it was the city in mainland Europe that saw the highest rise (+36%) in the population of millionaires from 2013 – 2023.
Wherever collectibles are kept, the Altoo Wealth Platform can help their owners keep track of them and the items’ current values. The Altoo Wealth Platform is an advanced digital solution that consolidates, analyses, and visualises data on all the diverse holdings typically present in UHNWIs’ portfolios, both bankable and non-bankable. For UHNWIs managing extensive collections across various – hopefully disaster-safe – locations the platform’s gallery view helps maintain a comprehensive inventory, including item location and current valuation. Valuations, insurance policies, and other important digital documents connected to individual items can be attached to each item’s record for easy, logical access.
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24 January 2025
Even just a quick browse through WEF’s website reveals a tremendous emphasis on data-driven insights, as should be expected from any modern, professional organisation. Virtually every published report or article presents statistical or otherwise numerical evidence supporting the WEF’s various initiatives. Also, the WEF website has a dedicated section devoted to intelligence where key issues and research findings are displayed in intuitive dashboards. Here is an example of how the WEF visualises the topical ecosystem of financial and monetary systems:
Much of the most recently published material – for example, this video recap of economic predictions for 2025, which summarizes key survey results – include at least a few data points. Almost all of the key arguments made in the summary of the WEF’s latest Global Risks Report are backed up with visualised data.
The WEF and family offices serve different – albeit sometimes overlapping – purposes. Even so, the WEF’s demonstrated success in operationalising data should lead family officers to:
To answer this operational question, we can map out how the WEF approaches data based on publicly available information. Their strategy includes:
The WEF is actively advancing data quality and trustworthiness through several initiatives such as the Data for Common Purpose Initiative (DCPI). Launched in December 2020, this initiative aims to create a foundational governance framework that allows for the ethical sharing of data across various sectors. Key priorities include unlocking data from silos while protecting privacy rights and promoting a responsible approach to data exchange. The WEF has stated that three critical principles to uphold in the data economy are data integrity, interoperability, and inclusivity in the sense of ensuring that the right data is accessible to the right people.
One of the WEF’s notable technology partners is with Salesforce, which has helped the Forum create a single source of truth based on both internal data regarding attendees as well as the external data (for example on sustainability and economics) the attendees discuss.
An example of such a partnership is the one the WEF has with Accurat, a design agency focused on data storytelling that has helped the Forum clearly present important facts and figures in a number of high-profile reports since 2016. According to the agency’s founder, before the partnership began “the team at the WEF was used (as everyone else in 2016) to doing things the traditional way: manual graphic processes and hundreds of hand-crafted country profiles for each published report.”
After evaluating the WEF’s approach to working with data, the most important takeaway family offices should have is that the Forum relies on a wide variety of external partners for help. In other words, they do not try to do it all themselves.
Neither should family offices. Nor do they need to rely on multiple partners to handle different aspects of the wealth data value chain. The Altoo Wealth Platform can automatically access the latest digital information on all of the family’s bankable and non-bankable holdings, analyse it, and present it in easy-to-understand dashboards. Actionable insights around portfolio and asset performance, anticipated cashflows, and a wide variety of other financial metrics are all available with just a few clicks.
To learn more, please get in touch!
24 January 2025
In 2024, Klaus Schwab announced his departure from the WEF’s day-to-day management and now serves as the chairman of its board of trustees. While he – like all leaders of influential organizations – has received his fair share of criticism, he undoubtedly “got it right” when recognising and acting on the importance of:
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a widespread concern in Europe about American economic dominance. This concern was popularised by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s book “Le défi américain” (“The American Challenge”), which highlighted the perceived technological and managerial gap between Europe and the USA. This “American challenge” included the fear that European companies would be sold to American investors and that the US would dominate markets due to its advancements in technology and management.
Klaus Schwab founded the European Management Forum in 1971 as a direct response to this “management gap”. Schwab was motivated by Servan-Schreiber’s book and wanted to help introduce European economic players to modern American economic methods. The initial 1971 meeting – organised to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Centre d’Études Industrielles (CEI) in Geneva, where Schwab was teaching – involved a number of American participants, including US economist Harvard Business School Dean George P. Baker, who acted as chair, and liberal US economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was a keynote speaker.
As the 1970s unfolded, however, geopolitical events like the oil crisis of 1973/1974 demonstrated that transatlantic competitive tensions were far from the only issues worth addressing on the global stage. Schwab invited Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping to attend the European Management Forum in 1979 and by the 1980s was inviting other high-ranking political leaders from around the world. In 1987, Schwab changed the name of the organization to the World Economic Forum (WEF), marking a definitive emphasis on the global issues it is known for addressing today.
Schwab’s initial focus on bridging the transatlantic management gap was a prescient recognition of the increasing interconnectedness of economies. Expanding his organization’s scope demonstrated his ability to adapt to changing realities and recognize the broader implications of globalisation.
For UHNWIs, this historical trajectory offers a valuable lesson: globalisation is not a recent phenomenon, but a decades-long process with evolving dynamics. Just as Schwab recognized the need to broaden his initial focus, UHNWIs must adopt a global perspective when managing their wealth. Diversification across geographies and asset classes is crucial not only for maximising returns but also for mitigating risks associated with geopolitical instability and economic shocks in any single region. Security, both financial and personal, also takes on a global dimension in this context, requiring careful consideration of international regulations, political climates, and potential threats.
Since 1971, Schwab and the Forum have continued to make a basic argument that businesses should not focus not just on financial profits but also the interests of customers, suppliers, and society as a whole.
This message has been a recurring theme at Davos meetings and has appeared in one form or another in even the earliest of Schwab’s books. Schwab, who holds a doctorate in engineering, published Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau (Modern Management in Mechanical Engineering) in the same year as he founded the Forum. This short book included one of the earliest German-language discussions of the concept of what is today known as stakeholder capitalism.
Over recent years, many of the highest-profile global initiatives – discussed on the WEF stage or otherwise making headlines – related to stakeholder capitalism have revolved around the use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics for businesses. Internally, the WEF sets detailed operational guidance and standards regarding its organisation’s sustainable practices.
A frequent critique of the WEF in general and Schwab in particular is that they are creating an elitist facade: a spectacle of the world’s best-resourced individuals and organizations professing concern for global welfare while pursuing self-interest behind the scenes. For example, many supposedly green-minded WEF attendees have come under fire for adding to global warming by taking private jets to Davos.
It is hard to argue, however, that Schwab and the WEF have ever been inconsistent in their public stance on stakeholder capitalism. When Schwab published his first book in 1971, he and the Forum were nowhere near as influential as they are today. Throughout the decades, their emphasis on broader societal well-being has remained steadfast.
UHNWIs will not need the WEF to remind them that it is a good idea to think beyond their own interests. History holds countless examples of ultra-wealthy people advancing public good through philanthropy and socially-conscious business practices.
Instead, the lesson here is about the importance of defining principles, sticking to them, and leading by example. Enduring legacies stem from clear visions backed by decisive action.
Remember that any influential person’s vision of a better future – and the actions he or she takes to advance this vision – can be expected to receive at least a little criticism in one form or another.
Schwab is known as one of the world’s most influential networkers. His ability to bring together disparate groups of business leaders, politicians, and members of civil society was the primary driver behind the WEF’s rise to the global influence it enjoys today.
For example, his networking skills are widely regarded as having ultimately led to the creation of the World Trade Organization following the Uruguay round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade deliberations. The idea for these deliberations is said to have stemmed from discussions among WEF participants brought together by Schwab.
While the ultra-wealthy understand networking’s value for advancing immediate interests, the greater opportunity lies in becoming a connector. By strategically linking members of their networks, UHNWIs can create exponential value that extends far beyond bilateral relationships.
Just as Schwab’s power stemmed from connecting disparate groups, UHNWIs who facilitate meaningful introductions often find themselves at the center of valuable new ventures and opportunities. This reciprocal dynamic often creates a virtuous cycle: those known for making thoughtful connections tend to receive similar high-value introductions in return. The most valuable component of any network is its “nodes.”
Klaus Schwab’s track record heading up the WEF demonstrates how a global outlook, consistent principles, and strategic networking can shape international dialogue for decades.
While not every UHNWI shares Schwab’s mission and extensive network, every UHNWI can use the lessons outlined above with respect to the management of their wealth. Almost every UHNWI has an internationally diversified asset portfolio, a desire to leave a meaningful legacy, and a network of advisors, family members, and other stakeholders.
The Altoo Wealth Platform can make translating these lessons into financial peace of mind fast and easy by:
If you would like to learn more, we look forward to hearing from you!
22 January 2025
The stakes are particularly high in wealth management. As the Altrata World Ultra Wealth Report 2024 suggests, the global UHNWI population is expanding at an annual rate of 9%. For wealth managers, keeping pace with this shift requires adopting cutting-edge technologies to meet the rising expectations of tech-savvy clients.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology are at the heart of this transformation. AI enables wealth managers to sift through vast datasets to offer personalized insights and automate routine tasks like compliance checks, freeing advisors to focus on strategic planning.
A survey by Accenture found that nine out of ten financial advisors believe AI can help grow their books of business by more than 20% through improved client engagement and operational efficiency. Additionally, PwC’s research forecasts that assets managed by AI-enabled digital platforms, such as robo-advisors, are expected to nearly double, reaching almost $6 trillion US dollars by 2027.
Blockchain, meanwhile, enhances security and transparency in wealth management. By enabling real-time transaction verification and smart contracts, it ensures faster, more reliable services. These tools are no longer optional but essential in a sector where 66% of clients now demand a digital-first approach to managing their wealth according to F2 Strategy’s 2024 WealthTech Outlook.
This year’s focus at the WEF on “Collaboration in the Intelligent Age” highlights the increasing demand for integrated solutions in wealth management. Platforms like Altoo exemplify this trend, bridging the gap between UHNWIs, family offices, and financial advisors.
“Altoo’s platform is a game changer. Our clients describe it as a world-class asset management solution with exceptional security features.” says Ian Keates, CEO of Altoo.
By providing a centralized dashboard that aggregates data across global institutions, the Wealth Platform offers clients complete visibility into their wealth, empowering better decision-making.
This ethos of collaboration is also evident in Altoo’s partnership with ALBAPAZ, a multi-family office. “Altoo allows us to ensure optimal wealth allocation, conduct regular valuations, and deliver detailed reporting,” says Dominik Unger, ALBAPAZ co-founder. The integration of technology and human expertise enables his clients to navigate complex wealth structures with agility and confidence.
While innovators thrive, traditional wealth management firms face an uphill battle. Many still rely on outdated systems that are slow, error-prone, and incapable of meeting modern expectations. The Capgemini World Wealth Report shows that over 60% of UHNWIs prefer a hybrid model blending digital tools with human expertise – a model that requires significant investment in technology.
The consequences of failing to modernize are stark. Fintech disruptors and robo-advisors are rapidly eroding the market share of legacy firms. Meanwhile, clients increasingly demand seamless, mobile-first experiences and greater transparency – services that traditional approaches struggle to provide.
As the wealth management landscape evolves, choosing the right technology partner is critical for UHNWIs. Here is what to prioritize:
01 Security and Privacy: Ensure the platform uses advanced encryption and complies with international data regulations.
02 Usability: Opt for solutions with intuitive interfaces that simplify complex financial data.
03 Flexibility: Look for platforms that can be tailored to manage diverse, multi-jurisdictional portfolios.
04 Support: Robust client service and onboarding expertise are essential for smooth integration.
The future of wealth management lies in hyper-personalization, driven by AI and real-time analytics. McKinsey predicts that 80% of firms will adopt integrated platforms to meet client demands for bespoke solutions. Simultaneously, sustainability is becoming a key consideration, with ESG (environmental, social, governance) factors increasingly influencing investment decisions.
“Technology is not just a tool – it is a cornerstone of modern wealth management strategy.
By embracing advanced platforms and collaborative approaches, wealth managers can not only keep pace but lead the industry into the Intelligent Age, “ underlines Ian Keates.
The clock is ticking on the future of wealth management. As Klaus Schwab emphasizes, “The future will be shaped by those who harness the power of technology and human collaboration.”Wealth managers must act decisively, embracing innovation to serve the growing ranks of UHNWIs. Platforms like Altoo, with their emphasis on security, usability, and collaboration, are setting the standard for this new era. The Intelligent Age is here, and those who adapt will define the future of wealth management.