Wealth Management
One diagnosis, one design, one counterpart, for wealth that spans families, generations and jurisdictions.
Every fee fixed in writing before the stage begins.The diagnosis starts from EUR 4,900 and is credited in full against the design. The family may stop after any stage and keep every document produced.
Most families with significant wealth hold an accumulation: a trust from one adviser, a company from another, accounts opened for single transactions. Each piece made sense when it was made. Together they rarely do. In Family Wealth Architecture we take the whole, design it deliberately, have it built by licensed firms in each jurisdiction and remain the family’s single counterpart afterwards.
This page sets out what that costs: the Bank’s own fees for each stage, what licensed partner firms typically charge for the components, and what a complete structure costs in its first year and every year after. Every fee of the Bank is fixed in writing before the stage begins, and the family may stop after any stage and keep every document produced up to that point.
A written assessment of who belongs to the family, what it owns, through which entities and residences, where it is exposed and what the wealth should do in twenty years.
A design memorandum: the options considered and rejected, the recommended structure and jurisdictions, its running cost, its reporting calendar and the partner firm for each element.
IFB selects, briefs and coordinates the licensed trust companies, law firms and tax advisers, keeps the timetable, collects signatures and opens the accounts.
An annual review of the whole structure against the family and the law, a reporting calendar for every jurisdiction and one counterpart for every partner firm.
The Bank’s fees cover the architecture: the analysis, the design, the coordination and the memory of the whole. Formation, trusteeship, legal and tax advice are provided by licensed partner firms under their own engagement letters and billed to the family or its structure at their own rates. IFB owns none of these firms and takes no commission from them. An element is a trust, a foundation, a company or an account at another institution; accounts at IFB follow the Bank’s published account terms.
Wealth Architecture fees
| Stage | Individual or couple | Several generations, or three or more jurisdictions | Effort at the Bank’s published rates |
|---|---|---|---|
| First conversation, 45 minutes | No charge | No charge | – |
| Diagnosis | from €4,900 | from €9,500 | 25–35 h ≈ €10,750–15,050 |
| Design memorandum | from €14,500 | from €24,500 | 40–60 h ≈ €17,200–25,800; 60–90 h ≈ €25,800–38,700 |
| Implementation coordination | €3,500 per element | €3,500 per element | Partner firms at cost, without mark-up |
| Family office build-out | from €34,500 | from €34,500 | ≈ 80 h ≈ €34,400 |
| Stewardship retainer, per year | from €9,500 | from €18,000 | Annual review, reporting calendar, coordination |
| Investment management | See Wealth Management Fees | See Wealth Management Fees | Separate mandate |
Effort is costed as the Bank costs every mandate: four fifths of the hours at advisory level (€350 per hour) and one fifth in review by a senior banker (€750 per hour), a blended €430 per hour, at the rates published on the Bank’s Consulting page. Every fixed fee lies below that figure.
Three illustrative mandates. Partner costs are market references from published sources (listed below), converted at the reference rates of 1 November 2026 and rounded. They are typical figures or lower bounds, not quotations; the design memorandum replaces them with firm quotes.
An offshore asset-protection trust in the Cook Islands, holding a BVI company that owns the investment accounts.
A Jersey discretionary trust as the family’s permanent owner, holding a BVI company for the investment portfolio.
The Jersey trust and BVI holding, plus a single family office in Singapore that the family staffs and the Bank recruits and supervises.
In the Dynasty example the partner set-up line is the Jersey trust from about €12,000, the BVI company about €2,000 and the Singapore office from about €56,000; the running line is Jersey from about €30,000, BVI about €1,600 and the office from about €210,100, most of it salaries the family would pay in any case.
A family can commission each piece separately. The design work does not disappear; it is billed by every adviser who has to understand the whole before touching a part. Here is one design memorandum of 40 to 60 hours, priced three ways.
London private-client partner rates of £650–695 per hour as published by a London law firm in October 2026, converted at €1 = £0.834. Large-firm partners charge more: the LexisNexis CounselLink 2025 report puts the median for firms of over 750 lawyers at USD 1,050 per hour.
Published prices and ranges from providers and practitioners, as found on 1 November 2026. Fees vary with complexity; quotations replace them in the design.
Market references
| Component | Set-up | Each year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cook Islands asset-protection trust | USD 25,000 | USD 7,000 (trustee, counsel, protector); US tax filings USD 2,000–3,000 where applicable | [1] |
| Jersey discretionary trust | £4,000–10,000 simple; £10,000–30,000 mid; £30,000–50,000 and more for complex structures | £10,000–12,000 for £3–10 million; £25,000–75,000 for £25–75 million | [2] |
| Liechtenstein foundation | About €38,400 (provider estimate); capital of CHF, EUR or USD 30,000 to be endowed | Minimum income tax CHF 1,800 as a private asset structure, plus council and administration | [3] [4] |
| BVI company | USD 1,750–2,250 in the first year, all-in | USD 1,750 renewal including registered agent and economic-substance report | [5] |
| DIFC foundation, Dubai | Government fees from about AED 25,000, plus provider fees | Registered agent, accounting | [6] |
| Singapore single family office (13O/13U) | S$80,000–150,000; complex structures above S$250,000 | From about S$300,000 for a lean office; above S$1 million fully staffed | [7] |
| A family’s all-in wealth costs | – | Typically 115–175 bp of investable assets, investment and other services together | [8] |
| Private-client lawyers, London | Partner £650–695, senior associate £465–520, associate £390–440 per hour | – | [9] |
Exchange rates of 1 November 2026 (UTC): €1 = USD 1.1166, £0.8340, CHF 0.9206, S$1.4276, AED 4.1008.
A trust, a holding company and a child’s move abroad are rarely reviewed together by the people who set them up separately. Controlled-foreign-company rules, beneficial-ownership registers, a reporting duty each firm assumed another had covered: the errors sit where the pieces meet. We design the joints, because we see the whole.
Many correct structures cannot open an account because a compliance department cannot follow them. A structure designed by a bank carries the documentation that banks and correspondent banks expect from the outset.
Every stage is priced in writing before it starts. The diagnosis is credited in full against the design. Partner firms invoice the family directly, at their own rates, without a mark-up by the Bank.
IFB owns none of the trust companies, law firms or tax advisers it works with and takes no commission from them. A partner that no longer serves the family is replaced.
The family tells its story once. When the founder can no longer act, the heirs inherit one counterpart who knows how the whole was built and why, not a drawer of engagement letters.
Begin with a 45-minute first conversation, free of charge and confidential from the first word. If one simple step is enough, a will, one company or one account, we will say so.
Request a diagnosis
A few details let us prepare the first conversation properly. Everything you send goes directly to the bank and is treated in confidence.
Prefer to talk first? Book a 45-minute videoconference.
