The ROI of supporting UHNW clients beyond their investments

The leading firms serving ultra-high net worth clients — from private banks to certified public accounting firms — are thinking about how to create deeper, more sustainable relationships with clients by supporting them more holistically.

“Investment performance is table stakes and increasingly commoditized at this level,” says Stefano Dolomas, Vice President, Family Office Solutions at Brown Brothers Harriman. “What differentiates a relationship over time is the ability to solve for the broader needs of the family, not just the portfolio. By proactively connecting clients to trusted lifestyle and family solutions, we become more deeply embedded in their lives and decision-making processes.”

Stefano’s perspective illustrates a pattern we see everyday in conversations with leaders in wealth management, private client insurance, accounting and more. And as advisors look to provide more integrated solutions, we’re often asked the same question: how are other firms working with Nines to help their clients?

Supporting a family’s life at home is an incredibly meaningful way to make an impact beyond the portfolio. By partnering with Nines, advisors alleviate everyday frustrations around owning properties, managing household staff and vendors, and maintaining passion assets (like cars, planes, yachts, art). This offers clients a sense of peace of mind and continuity — but what’s the ROI for the firms and the advisors?

We asked three advisors from Brown Brothers Harriman, Kaufman Rossin, and Armanino to share why their firms invest in lifestyle services, how Nines fits into their integrated strategies, and ultimately, how that levels up to their overall goals and values as a firm.

Continuity & risk mitigation

If you go to any conference for advisors supporting UHNW clients, you’ll hear the term “quarterback” or “one-stop-shop” throughout the event. Clients want simplicity — one place, or one trusted person they can turn to for help with any question.

Stefano Dolomas describes Brown Brothers Harriman’s Family Office Solutions team as “the connective tissue across a family’s balance sheet and operating life.”

“Our goal is to become the family’s trusted first call when important questions arise,” says Stefano. “Whether we’re helping navigate generational transitions, evaluating what should be managed in-house versus outsourced, or connecting clients with specialized expertise, we aim to help families operate with greater confidence and clarity.”

As one of the largest private investment banks in the United States, BBH relies on trusted partnerships to enable advisors to serve as quarterbacks, without bringing every expert capability in-house.

“Whether it’s household operations, estate management, private aviation, cybersecurity, concierge healthcare, governance support, or other family office needs, our partners help us address challenges beyond investments while maintaining our role as the client’s primary advisor,” explains Stefano.

Estate management presents an interesting opportunity for advisors to provide continuity in an area where clients crave it most. Many families know who to call with questions about their financial wealth, but when it comes to managing properties, household staff, and physical assets, they don’t know where to turn. Inevitably, they ask the people they trust, even if it feels outside-the-box.

“When a client asks, ‘Who is managing my properties?” or ‘What happens when my estate manager leaves?’, they are asking questions about continuity, documentation, and operational resilience,” says Stefano. “Nines helps fill that gap by providing structure around the systems, processes, and institutional knowledge that support a family’s operating life. It allows us to offer a more complete solution while remaining true to our role as trusted advisor rather than service operator.”

Some firms take a more hands-on approach, providing lifestyle services and estate management support in-house. Jennifer Quent leads Lifestyle Services for the Family Office practice within the certified public accounting firm Kaufman Rossin, and plays an active role in clients’ everyday lives — and, by extension, in their Nines accounts.

“A lot of clients come to us when the principals are getting older, their employees are getting older and retiring, and there’s no continuity plan in place,” explains Jennifer. “Using an outsourced family office and lifestyle services provider offers a dependable source where a family’s data and knowledge can transfer with ease.”

With everything in Nines, that continuity extends across her team.

“Now that we have access, I can jump in there when a colleague is on vacation, and get all the information that the client might be asking for,” says Jennifer.

And in the long-term, this helps mitigate the risk of losing institutional knowledge when a team member leaves the organization.

“If I leave tomorrow, somebody’s got all the information there and the client is always going to get that seamless assistance that you’d expect when you sign up to work with a firm like ours,” says Jennifer.

Team efficiency & internal time savings

With Nines, the goal is to keep the answer to any estate management or lifestyle question at your fingertips. Who should we call when a pipe burst at the property in Miami? Where do we take the car for service, and who’s our trusted contact there? What’s covered under our insurance policy? Where is a piece of art, when was it last appraised, and what is the value?

“When a client asks us a question, clunky folder filing systems make it hard to easily pinpoint what you need, you have to think about who saved that where, what folder is it in,” says Jennifer Quent. “Suddenly it’s been 35 minutes and I’m still searching for this thing, and then you feel bad because you have to charge a client 35 minutes at your billing rate.”

Now, she can run a quick search in Nines to find the answer to any question.

“In minutes you can find something that might have taken you an hour before,” says Jennifer.

And while that time savings is meaningful for Jennifer and her team, it has a bigger impact for the CPA firm’s clients, since everyone’s time is billed.

“Time is money, and I don’t want to charge the client for 45 minutes if I can spend five,” says Jennifer.

For firms who provide more hands-on support, guiding household staff, property managers and vendors, as she did in a previous role, Jennifer says being able to assign and monitor tasks and checklists from afar would be invaluable.

“I could see that saving countless hours,” says Jennifer.

For Stefano and his team at BBH, partnering with platforms like Nines allows each advisor to save time evaluating resources and allows them to share solutions quickly with clients.

“Rather than spending significant time sourcing, vetting, and coordinating providers on an ad hoc basis, advisors can leverage established partners to deliver turnkey solutions,” explains Stefano. “This improves responsiveness, enhances the client experience, and enables our teams to spend more time acting as strategic advisors.”

Client engagement & retention

For Armanino, one of the top 25 largest accounting, consulting and technology firms in the United States, lifestyle services, bill pay, accounting and concierge services are more than a value-add.

“For us, it’s a profit center,” explains Armanino Partner Gail Pesach, who leads Family Office Services. “Consequently, over the past 60 years, we have been investing in the technology, in the training, and in the security, and we are an outsourced family office solution — if it touches money, we will handle it.”

With a deep bench of the specialized partners, Gail and her team can answer any question a client might have.

“That’s everything, it’s not quantifiable,” says Gail. “Our clients rely on us to be that resource so that they don’t have to vet the service providers.”

For example, estate management is not a service Gail and her team provide in-house, but if they see a client who’s struggling with managing their properties, assets, and household tasks and projects, they can refer Nines to meet the client’s needs.

“Nines is the only platform that I will recommend to clients that have multiple properties where they’re just trying to coordinate all of it,” says Gail.

While Gail’s team focuses on making the referral and then steps back to let the client and the client’s estate management team run the account, they continue to check in over time.

“Every year or so we check in with the estate manager and we say, how’s it going? Are you using it? Is it meaningful? And the answer is always yes,” says Gail.

Ultimately, Gail says partnering with the right expert service providers allows her team to deliver on their brand promise: “to be the most innovative, entrepreneurial firm that positively impacts our clients, our people and our community.” And for a firm that prioritizes deep, long-standing relationships with clients, consistently delivering service that goes beyond clients’ expectations is key to retention.

“We’re in the customer service business, and that’s really what we lead with,” says Gail. “We don’t say, ‘no,’ we say, ‘we’ll figure it out, we’ll make it happen’.”

New clients

With 89 people crossing the $30 million threshold every day (Knight Frank Wealth Report 2026), and 81% of inheritors planning to switch advisors within a year or two of inheritance (Capgemini World Wealth Report 2025), advisors are facing a threat of losing generational relationships — but also an opportunity to win new clients (and win over the next generation of their current clients) who aren’t satisfied with traditional baseline services.

Today, differentiation and loyalty starts with being that one go-to source for holistic support, and clearly illustrating that clients are more than their balance sheets.

“In competitive finals, every firm can present an investment allocation and market outlook,” says Stefano. “Fewer firms can demonstrate access to a curated, diligenced ecosystem of trusted providers that help families address challenges beyond wealth management. Platforms like Nines enhance our ability to tell a broader story about serving the whole client, which can be a meaningful differentiator when prospective clients are evaluating advisors who otherwise appear similar on investment credentials.”

In evaluating advisors, clients are looking for trusted partners who can support them through non-investment financial decisions, like buying a home or building an art collection, as well as essential conversations around security and risk management, health and wellbeing, family dynamics and more.

Life at home presents a unique starting point for advisors, because it’s universal (everyone has frustrations about their homes, their cars, their physical assets) and because it’s an easy way in to discussing what’s most meaningful to the client, and how they want to spend their time. If an advisor can help a client minimize household maintenance issues, improve relationships with household staff and vendors, and ultimately enjoy their time at home, they can make a daily impact in that client’s life.

It’s important to note that clients don’t expect their advisors to provide these services themselves. No wealth manager should spend time helping a client find a new property manager. But if the advisor knows where to turn for the problems that affect clients (quite literally) close to home, they stand to gain trust and build lasting relationships.

“Always having the right resource, and being a resource to every client, creates a winning reputation,” says Jennifer.

No firm can bring every expert service in-house. The key is having the right partners who share the firms values and commitment to helping the client.

“Trusted partners help us deliver more holistic advice, solving broader client challenges while keeping BBH at the center,” says Stefano. “This allows us to remain focused on being the family’s trusted advisor while ensuring clients receive comprehensive solutions to their most important challenges.”