Daniel Geltrude is managing partner at his namesake accounting firm, Geltrude & Company, in Nutley, N.J. Many accounting firms have established family office practices, and they all tend to work differently, providing different expertise. Geltrude & Company has a very accomplished, highly specialized family office practice. (This interview was slightly edited for clarity.)
Prince: Many accounting firms have family office practices, and there’s no consistency on what that means or what they do. Big picture, what is your family office practice all about?
Geltrude: Our family office practice is more about whom we work with than a traditional family office. The very wealthy, whether they have a formal family office or not, all have many tax-related issues and concerns. Also, the more complex their personal and business situations, the more often taxes play a role. Our primary job is to help them address their tax issues and concerns. We regularly find ways to minimize taxes for these families.
In a related vein, many wealthy families are concerned that their planning will do what it’s supposed to do. Without question, stress-testing is a big trend among family offices. The ability to evaluate how their plan, including the financial products they’re using, will work in different scenarios. When it comes to stress-testing, we usually team up with other high-caliber professionals such as insurance agents, leading trusts and estates attorneys, and wealth managers to conduct the analyses.
Geltrude & Company is an accounting firm and can also provide an array of services from bill paying to valuations and from compliance to litigation support services. While we will connect with very wealthy families because of our tax expertise, over time some clients will end up using the firm for more basic accounting and administrative work.
Prince: How did you decide to create your firm’s family office practice?
Geltrude: I could tell you we analyzed the family office universe, and we did an in-depth competitor analysis and completed a detailed SWOT matrix for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I could tell you that, but I won’t because that’s not the way it happened.
What did happen is that we ran into some extremely wealthy families who were concerned they were not doing everything they could to legally mitigate their taxes—and they were paying a great deal of taxes. While we were able to be of some help, I quickly saw that there was a lot we were not prepared to deal with. My solution was to build out the expertise that became our family office practice.
Prince: When you say, “build out the expertise,” just what are you referring to?
Geltrude: Geltrude & Company is an accounting firm in New Jersey you might miss driving down our street. But we have some of the smartest tax experts focused on the matters that the very wealthy are likely to face.