I recently sat down with Keith Bloomfield, president of Forbes Family Trust in New York City, to discuss the nature and evolution of this multifamily office, which is designed to work with the wealthiest families in the world.

Prince: Let's begin by having you discuss the  rationale for the Forbes Family Trust.

Bloomfield: The Forbes Family Trust set out in 2009 to provide like-minded families a unique way of accessing the wealth management marketplace and to offer a menu of lifestyle services. Following the global markets financial crisis in 2008, there was a lack of confidence in many of the traditional financial institutions. It was clear that the big banks and many "name" financial advisors were motivated or limited to promote internal offerings at the expense of better suited products from the competition. Many ultra-affluent families found that the objective advice they were putting their faith in was anything but objective.

At the same time, these ultra-affluent families want and deserve the professionals providing  advice to be experienced and qualified practitioners ... not product messengers. The attributes of high-quality service, responsiveness and that sense of ownership, although  paramount,  proved lacking. During the crises, many of the financial advisors to the very wealthy were silent, hoping everything would just blow over.

These factors led to the formation of the Forbes Family Trust and a recent strategic alliance with LGL Partners. Our objective is to deliver the expertise and exceptional service the ultra-affluent expect. In fact, we pride ourselves on dramatically exceeding expectations. At Forbes Family Trust, we provide a high-caliber boutique and an extraordinarily customized approach. The way we work with clients is very, very labor-intensive and completely centered on their needs. We employ a number of cutting-edge analytic tools and processes to enable us to get a very comprehensive and detailed understanding of our clients.

Given our financial backing, we're able to be highly selective with respect to the clients that engage us. Aside from being wealthy, we choose to work with families that have the same values and perspectives as we do. Everyone has to click.

Prince: You talk about being highly selective. Can you go into a little more detail?

Bloomfield: Many financial professionals are not all that choosy, provided the client is wealthy. For example, if a client has $100 million to invest and they came by the monies legally and ethically, I would say that nearly every investment advisor would take the funds. We're not like that. Yes, we want the opportunity to advise on the $100 million, but with all we put into the relationship, we're looking for a long-term association. That means we will turn down investors at this level if we don't feel that there is chemistry. And we have.

Prince: How do you find very wealthy families interested in working with you?

Bloomfield: Because we have the ability to be selective, we're not out there trying to drum up new business as so many multifamily offices are. As I just mentioned, our objective is to identify clients we connect with. There are a few ways this happens.

An important goal of the Forbes Family Trust is to be thought of as leaders in our industry. Our primary objective in developing cutting-edge intellectual capital is to be able to use these perspectives and insights to better serve our clients. Therefore, we put a lot of time, effort and money into developing our intellectual capital. Our relationship with LGL Partners and its professionals is a good example of this effort. Interestingly, this focus on developing the best people and disseminating innovative ideas has resulted in some significantly wealthy people coming to us over the transom.

The more common and consistent source of very wealthy families is due to the circles we travel in. While not trying to sell the Forbes Family Trust to anyone, our reputation and our personal relationships leads to a lot of interesting and fruitful conversations.

Our association with Forbes is also a potent factor in connecting with the ultra-affluent. From going to Forbes events to hosting our own, the affiliation with the family helps us identify potential ultra-affluent clients.

This combination of talent and thought leadership, personal relationships and our association with Forbes means we're not going to be beating the bushes looking for clients. Our professional team will be focused on advising our clients, not dialing for dollars! We can continue to be very selective in whom we choose to work with and still grow the business.

Prince: You mentioned your strategic alliance with LGL Partners. Can you elaborate?

Bloomfield: After extensive due diligence, we have selected LGL Partners as the exclusive investment advisor to the Forbes Family Trust. Given their extensive investment acumen, accomplished and experienced leadership team, deep resources and cultural fit, LGL Partners was the perfect choice for the Forbes Family Trust.

They trace their origins to a family office established to manage the financial, personal and philanthropic needs of a member of the Lenfest family following a multi-billion-dollar sale of their  private cable company over a decade ago. Now, the Forbes Family Trust shares the global wealth management experience of two successful entrepreneurial American families with its clients.

Additionally, we are extremely excited to have two additional accomplished wealth management and family office executives join our senior leadership team. Wall Street wealth management veteran Scott Gregorchuk will serve as chief executive officer and senior family office executive and Bill Luterman will be the chief investment officer. As a Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley alumnus, Scott has run wealth management businesses at major Wall Street firms and served on the Citigroup management committee. Also a Goldman Sachs alumnus, Bill has run a single-family office for over a decade and served as a direct investment advisor to the Pennsylvania state treasurer. Our leadership team has the combined skill set necessary to gain access to interesting opportunities and deliver experienced advice to our clients.

Prince: What services does the Forbes Family Trust provide its clients?

Bloomfield: We assist the very wealthy address a variety of issues and concerns. Beyond our focus on investment management, including the spectrum of alternative assets, we cover everything from estate and asset protection planning to the array of administrative and lifestyle  services. What's important to us is to be able to provide the very best expertise to our clients.

When it comes to the array of services provided by the Forbes Family Trust, we act as advisor, coordinator and facilitator. We are constantly evaluating professionals to be able to bring the best solutions to our clients. A key result of this process is to be able to deliver the highest and most appropriate products while mitigating the costs by leveraging our buying power and knowledge of appropriate product pricing.

As an example, there are a number of ways to deliver life insurance solutions to address estate taxes and  other client needs. Our process is aimed at optimizing the structure of family policies and mitigating costs. In many cases, ultra-affluent clients neglect a review of their structure and costs. Whether we directly provide services or indirectly provide best-in-class capabilities, we own the process from start to finish, such that the client receives what was promised. Of course, exceeding expectations for clients is always the goal.

Prince: With your strategic relationship with LGL Partners, can you describe your approach to investing?

Bloomfield: LGL brings to the Forbes Family Trust a deep investment team with experience from firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citigroup, UBS and the Federal Reserve Bank. We subscribe to the principle that the best advice comes from those who "do" and "have done." For multiple decades, LGL's investment professionals have been active and experienced practitioners in the capital markets. They have directly managed portfolios and executed equity, fixed income and option trades; structured derivatives; implemented hedging transactions; and have built and structured portfolios. This hands-on knowledge provides clarity, insight and the ability to strategically navigate diverse investment opportunities. 

Forbes Family Trust and LGL understand and identify whether the market or the manager is contributing to performance, applying our extensive quantitative resources to optimize portfolios and balance risk and reward. Our proprietary tools allow us to analyze traditional and alternative investments in great detail. We have the ability to report on and analyze over 1,000 alternative investment partnerships and asset class benchmarks from a proprietary database of actual returns.

Our experience allows us to formulate a macro view of the investment landscape and tactically implement it through appropriate vehicles. We conduct ongoing risk management across the entire investment portfolio and have the skills and tools to evaluate one-off investments, structured transactions or financing arrangements.

With the addition of the LGL team, we see across the investment landscape. With this knowledge and the ability to maximize buying power, we can offer clients a broad range of independent and conflict-free solutions with economies of scale.

Prince: What needs of the very wealthy do you address that help distinguish you from your competitors?

Bloomfield: While we bring some specialized talents to our clients, our greatest strength is our understanding of the issues they face and the various solutions to those issues. The deep understanding we develop of our clients coupled with our focus on being industry thought leaders is a big factor in enabling Forbes Family Trust to be state of the art in delivering customized and optimized solutions to our clients.

From an investment standpoint, we have many distinguishing attributes to meet client needs. For example, our senior executives advise clients directly. Our advisors are investors, not relationship managers. Our single-family office origins allow for unique access to investment ideas and "club" opportunities. We use robust proprietary software for investment selections.

When it comes to lifestyle services, concierge health care is a perfect example of a differentiating capability. A lot of wealthy people will settle for a private health advisory firm, which would assist in areas like complex disease management and arranging for second opinions. For our clients, this is insufficient. One of the concierge health care providers we choose to associate with is WorldClinic, which is a comprehensive health care provider. Our clients must be able to get all the services these care coordinators can deliver plus a whole lot more. Because of the lifestyles of many of the ultra-affluent-multiple houses, private jets and the like-they need to be able to receive emergency medical treatment anytime, anywhere. This usually means emergency telediagnosis and treatment, access to prescription medical kits and access to a physician house-call network.

I mentioned that at the Forbes Family Trust we have some specialized talents. In a previous professional life I was an M&A lawyer at Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett. Having worked as a deal attorney, we have been able to provide that skill set to our clients.

We find that many sophisticated wealthy families are looking to source and fund their own direct deals as opposed to investing in a blind pool fund. We are able to advise on the execution of these deals as well as source deal flow from our network of families. Families enjoy the economics of a general partner and the ability to target their private equity investment where they have expertise or interest. Along the same lines, we act as the centerpiece for club deals. Given a network of families, we are positioned to link ideas with capital from like-minded families.

Prince: Can you describe the outpost family office capabilities of the Forbes Family Trust?

Bloomfield: Our network spans the globe and we will work with clients and family offices based abroad. In dealing with some extraordinarily wealthy families from other countries, we found that they have a very strong interest in investing in the U.S. Many of them also send their children here for an education and some even are transitioning to become U.S. citizens. We've also found that some single-family and multifamily offices in other countries are looking for assistance concerning their U.S. investments and meeting the needs of their family members spending time in the U.S.

In these situations, we can act as an outpost family office. We're able to work with the families of other non-U.S. family offices to ensure they are accessing the highest level of personal and investment expertise for their interests in the U.S. Some of the greatest interest in the outpost family office is coming from the Far East.

Prince: Do you have plans to expand the business?

Bloomfield: We are always interested in speaking with registered investment advisors and investment representatives at the traditional Wall Street firms that have a similar vision and are the right cultural fit for the Forbes Family Trust. Having completed the strategic alliance with LGL Partners, we have a compelling offering and platform that may work well for those advisors who value our approach and want to be part of our team.