The Sherpa Guiding Family Offices

NEWSLETTER

Family office insights this week:

• A profile on Shaun Parkin aka The Family Office Sherpa

• Where to find a $10 trillion company

• How family offices are expanding their services

• Family office jobs in New York, Dubai and Singapore

• Read: How to derail wealth transfer

The Sherpa Guiding Family Offices

Shaun Parkin on his popular podcast and why family offices need outside perspective.

As the family office industry becomes increasingly noisy, trustworthy voices are at a premium.

For both family office professionals and the vendors working with them, it’s essential to find experts who share practical insights honed through years of working side by side with family offices.

Shaun Parkin from Hall Road Investments fits the bill.

After years working with family offices at State Street he left to apply his skillset as an independent advisor. 

Hall Road acts as an advocate for family offices, with a focus on investment governance: to help family offices design, implement and maintain an investment structure. 

Working externally as a support partner to ensure success explains the ‘Sherpa’ title of his informative podcast. 

“Some clients call me a ‘critical friend’ or a ‘Sherpa’ - both suggesting the same thing,” says Parkin. “I’m not part of the family or an internal executive, but a trusted, independent guide with the family’s best interests at heart.”

Some family office podcasts don’t offer more than a cure for insomnia but the Family Office Sherpa Podcast is succinct at 20 minutes or less. 

“I love doing the podcast!” says Parkin, and his enthusiasm comes through in the practical content - most recently his one on what he’d do after a $200M liquidity event.

Episodes tackle key themes for an evolving wealth management industry, where the lines between service and product have blurred and the ‘family office’ term has become trendy.

“A lot of wealth managers are trying to be everything to the office, even in domains where they have no expertise,” Parking explains. “Adviser creep can be extremely frustrating and can lead to terrible outcomes, from client service to investment management returns.”

It’s also directly related to one of the most common mistakes he sees family offices make - lack of process when selecting advisors or vendors.

Successful people spend most of their time building their business, so they often don’t have actual experience with what ‘good’ looks like or know what questions to ask. “Like taking a referral from another office or adviser. Just because it works for them, doesn’t mean it’s right for you.”

Another mistake he identifies is investment managers in small teams that don’t have sufficient resources to bounce ideas off or sense check decisions, as Shaun puts it, the family office can become an echo chamber.

“If the investment function is not held accountable, then there is no exchange of new ideas, of contrarian or ‘devils’ advocate’ style oversight, which can lead to one person effectively marking their own homework.”

Parkin believes that investment committees are an essential governance structure to ensure an investment policy isn’t just developed, but efficiently implemented and measured.

“Be it internal or external, we need to ensure they are keeping to the mandate, that due diligence and other tasks are undertaken and that portfolio goals, from a risk and return perspective, are being followed and measured.”  

Without this, he sees preserving wealth across generations as more of a challenge. 

“I think history is full of poor investment governance and where people get the idea - often incorrectly - that the third generation loses the money. It usually stems from the articulated investment policy not being reflected in the actual portfolio.” 

Part of Parkin’s role is helping families with focused interests come to terms with their tolerance for risk compared to expected returns.

“These are family offices, so portfolios can reflect the family’s strengths and interests, and you often see heavy overweights to certain asset classes. It’s not my role to be the investment manager - it’s my job to make sure they understand the implications of each investment and to make sure we know what the portfolio should do during different parts of the cycle.”

As the industry matures and professionalizes, Parkin sees more demand for services that support the practical elements of this evolution.

“I see an increased use of firms such as Hall Road that are not seeking funds under advice or transactions, but to assist on the less glamorous - but I would argue more important - aspects such as structure, counterparty management and governance.” 

The Family Office Sherpa Podcast is available on Spotify or Apple.

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𝕏 highlights

The sectors where family offices can find a $10 trillion company.

Family offices are expanding… here’s what they are offering.

More from Campden Wealth / AlTi Tiedemann Global: what family offices use AI for.

 💼 where to work

Three notable family office job opportunities posted this week…

Director of Tax - Private Family Office (New York / SFO)

Head of Family Office - Exante (Dubai / SFO)

Finance Director - Private Family Office (Singapore / SFO)

📚 what to read

Strangers in Paradise unpacks how families who come into wealth, especially first-gens, often feel like immigrants in a new country, struggling to adapt to the “culture” of affluence. Grubman draws a sharp contrast between those born into wealth and those who earn it, showing how value clashes, communication breakdowns, and unspoken rules can derail wealth transfer.

📻 what to listen to

How could we not? Of course it’s The Family Office Sherpa Podcast, all the way back to Shaun Parkin’s first episode.

📺 what to watch

Anushka Gupta on Investing for Family Office Clients.

And finally…

Some family office content we have coming up:

• private investment networks

• the future of recruitment

• a look at the Hong Kong family office scene

Family Office Buzz will be back on Monday (here’s the last edition if you missed it) with more of the best content on family offices and beyond.

Until next week, see you on 𝕏 or LinkedIn.

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