Consolidated reporting of family wealth

The simplest question is often the one without an answer: “how much is all our wealth worth, today?”. Anyone with accounts at several banks, stakes in one or more companies, real estate in different countries and a few illiquid investments struggles to answer precisely. Every provider sends its own statement, every statement has a different format, and no one adds up the total. Consolidated reporting exists precisely to fill this gap: to give a single, coherent and up-to-date view of the entire family wealth.

What consolidated reporting is

Consolidating means bringing into a single picture data that arrives from different sources, standardising it so that it is comparable and can be added up. It is not a mere summary sheet: it is a structured process that gathers data from banks, managers, companies and other assets, normalises it into a reference currency and returns it as a single snapshot of the wealth.

The value does not lie in the sum itself, but in the coherence. Only when all the data speaks the same language — same currency, same categories, same reference date — does it become possible to truly understand how the wealth is allocated and how it behaves over time.

What it must contain

Useful reporting answers a few fundamental questions, with precision.

• How much the total wealth is worth, net of liabilities (mortgages, financing, commitments).
• How it is allocated: by asset class (liquidity, bonds, equities, real estate, unlisted holdings, other), by currency, by geographic area.
• How it behaves over time: the performance of the period and its evolution, distinguishing what depends on the markets from what depends on contributions or withdrawals.
• Where the concentration risks are: excessive exposure to a single security, a sector, a currency or a counterparty.
• Which flows are expected: maturities, coupons, dividends, capital commitments.

Good reporting does not just show the numbers: it makes them readable even to those who are not finance technicians, because they serve to decide, not to impress.

The practical difficulties

Consolidating is more complex than it seems, and the pitfalls are almost always the same.

Heterogeneous sources. Every bank and every manager uses different formats, categories and valuation criteria. Bringing them back to a common standard requires method and clear rules.

Different currencies. Wealth spread across several areas requires a reference currency and a stable conversion criterion, otherwise comparisons over time lose their meaning.

Illiquid assets. Real estate, unlisted holdings, works of art or closed-end fund units have no daily market price. They must be valued with explicit and coherent criteria, declaring the assumptions adopted.

Updating and frequency. Reporting is useful only if it is regular and timely. A figure six months old is of no use for deciding. The frequency must be calibrated to the complexity of the wealth.

Why it is the foundation of everything

Consolidated reporting is not an end in itself: it is the basis on which every wealth decision is built. Without an overall view you cannot assess whether the allocation respects the family’s objectives, you do not identify concentrations of risk, you do not check whether the managers are doing their job.

It is also the tool that makes governance possible: when the family meets to take decisions, it must start from shared and indisputable figures. Reporting provides that common ground. And at the moment of generational transfer, it is what allows the next generation to truly understand what it is inheriting.

There is finally a benefit of control: placing all the accounts side by side brings to light hidden costs, duplicated management, forgotten positions and fees that, seen in isolation, went unnoticed. Often the first consolidation pays for the effort on its own, simply by making visible what was previously scattered.

From snapshot to steering tool

The leap in quality happens when reporting stops being a periodic snapshot and becomes a tool of continuous steering: a dashboard that flags deviations from objectives, warns about maturities and measures results against a benchmark. At that point the wealth is no longer a sum of separate positions, but a whole governed with method.

At SIH ONE we build consolidated reporting as the foundation of wealth oversight: we gather the data from every source, standardise it into a single picture and return it in a clear form, designed for deciding.

Do you finally want a single view of your wealth? Let’s build your reporting together.