Family governance

The first video episode on the five governance questions (the nomination, the trust deed, the decision record, the access map, succession), and an open call for the questions families want answered in Episode 2.

The governance gap between how families invest and how they run everything else that matters.

The series' turn, and how the governance practice described in these essays became something other families can run.

Hong Kong's new central gold clearing system and the end of retail leveraged gold trading at major Chinese banks, two routes to the same structural shift. Also Japan's bond-market stress and a governance question for multi-jurisdiction families.

The first issue: what the Brief covers, one market development worth watching and one governance question worth asking.

How a family below the traditional family-office threshold builds the same institutional discipline anyway.

What an intelligence layer is, why the $5–50M tier has never had one, and what that gap means for SMSF trustees in particular.

Why the governance layer comes before the reporting tools when a family stands up its office, and what that means in the age of AI.

For estate planning solicitors with SMSF clients. Why the will and the binding death benefit nomination are drafted apart, rarely checked together, and how that fails.

For accountants and advisers with SMSF clients. Why the first twenty minutes of a meeting go to reconstruction, the governance documents every trustee should hold, and what a prepared client looks like.

Why the most expensive hour in a family office is the one the principal arrives unprepared for, and why Vestry is built to prepare for the professional's hour rather than replace it.