Family offices in Germany

A family office manages a large private fortune the way a private bank manages a client account, but built entirely around one family or a small group of them, independent of a specific bank. It typically covers investment management, tax and legal coordination, succession planning and administrative work such as accounting and property oversight. BaFin describes family offices as firms that manage large private assets independently of a bank, and notes the term itself has no fixed legal definition in Germany.

Germany's family offices trace back to two sources of wealth: the country's many family-owned Mittelstand companies whose owners cashed out or professionalized their holdings, and entrepreneurs from technology and industry who set up a dedicated structure after a sale or listing.

Family offices concentrate wherever private wealth and private banking already sit. Munich holds a dense cluster, home to family offices tied to Bavarian industrial families and to the family office arm of Munich Re's wider ecosystem, alongside independent firms with no bank affiliation. Hamburg, a city built on trading and shipping fortunes, carries its own long tradition of single-family offices that rarely appear in public rankings. Berlin and Düsseldorf add newer offices set up by founders after a technology exit, next to older ones tied to Rhineland industrial families.

Frankfurt remains the city with the clearest institutional presence: the Family Office der Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft AG is a multi-family office open across the German savings bank network, and the Frankfurt page covers it and the bank-run units there in more detail.

Whether a family office needs a BaFin license depends entirely on who it serves, not on where it sits. A pure single-family office that manages the wealth of one family and takes no outside clients generally needs no license, because the office and the investor are treated as the same economic unit. The moment a family office manages money for several unrelated families on a commercial basis, it needs authorization under the Banking Act (KWG) or the Kapitalanlagegesetzbuch (KAGB), the same laws that license banks and fund managers.

Some activities stay license-free regardless of structure, according to BaFin's own guidance note: general advice to a wealthy family, mediation in family disputes, accounting, controlling and administrative services such as travel planning do not by themselves trigger authorization. Investment advice, discretionary portfolio management and custody of securities do trigger it once the office serves clients beyond its own family, which is why every multi-family office in Germany operates under a banking or investment firm license, directly or through a partner bank.

Succession is the constant topic, especially where the family's wealth sits inside an operating Mittelstand company rather than a liquid portfolio: moving both the business and the fortune to the next generation without breaking either apart takes years of planning that a family office coordinates alongside external tax and legal advisors. Private markets funds and ELTIFs have become a bigger part of the conversation as semi-liquid structures make illiquid assets easier to hold.

Digital assets are the newer addition. Family offices increasingly ask how tokenized real-world assets fit a private portfolio, an area distribution partners connect to regulated infrastructure such as the GDX Primary Market, and bitcoin comes up as a standalone allocation question, which the Finance Loop bitcoin masterclass addresses directly for professional investors.

Finance Loop is the meeting place where family office professionals across Germany, Austria and Switzerland talk with private bankers, asset managers and the founders building new investment products. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities and holds events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

For advisors serving family office clients, the one-day masterclass Bitcoin for Investors, held in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin, covers portfolio fit, access routes and custody for bitcoin. Finance Loop Premium Partner Gubbi brings its work on distribution-ready tokenized assets into Finance Loop events. Related pages: family offices in Frankfurt and asset management in Germany.

A single-family office serves one family only and generally needs no BaFin license, because it manages the assets of its own owners, not outside clients. A multi-family office takes on several unrelated families under individual contracts and, once it gives investment advice or manages portfolios commercially, needs authorization under the Banking Act or the Kapitalanlagegesetzbuch.

Frankfurt holds the clearest institutional presence, including the Family Office der Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft AG. Munich and Hamburg carry dense but less publicly visible clusters tied to industrial and trading fortunes, and Berlin and Düsseldorf add newer offices set up after technology and industrial exits.

Family office jobs are posted on the career pages of the larger bank-run units and, less consistently, on the sites of independent multi-family offices, since many single-family offices are small and do not advertise widely. A personal network in the private banking and asset management field, of the kind built at Finance Loop events, is often how a role gets filled.