FAQ.

An independent financial adviser — ‘consulente autonomo’ in the Italian regulatory wording — is remunerated solely by the fee agreed with the client: no placement mandates, no products to sell, and no rebates, commissions or incentives from banks or investment houses. This is not a statement of principle but a verifiable legal condition: I am entered in the independent advisers’ section of the single register of financial advisers, kept by the OCF under the supervision of CONSOB and reserved for those who work on a fee-only basis. Anyone can check my standing on the register at any time. The steps that led me to this choice are set out year by year in my journey; the story in full is in the article Why I Chose to Stand Solely on Your Side.

An independent financial adviser costs a fee set out in writing before the engagement: you know what you are paying, and why, before you sign. The fee may be fixed or expressed as a percentage of the wealth under advice, depending on the nature of the engagement and the services required; in every case it reflects the complexity of the wealth — the number of banks and custodians, any business and property components, any foreign jurisdictions — and the time devoted to the work. In the Italian market, the fees of independent advisers usually fall between 0.5% and 1% a year of the wealth advised, decreasing as the amounts grow: the comparison between the three ways of paying for advice, with the figures, is in the guide The Invisible Costs, which anyone can download. This is why the fee proposal comes after the initial analysis of your situation, in writing and with no obligation: you can then compare it, line by line, with the overall cost of your current arrangements and decide with all the numbers in front of you.

The difference is the mandate. A private banker represents their institution: they put forward their bank’s solutions, and rightly so. I represent no institution and have nothing to place: my only mandate is the one the family entrusts to me. In practice I do not replace the bankers — I work with them every day as a technical counterpart: preparing the renegotiation of terms with comparable figures, dealing directly with your bankers, and checking that every proposal is consistent with the overall strategy and the agreed level of risk. The decisions, and the signatures with your bank, remain yours. When wealth is spread across several banks, this single point of direction stops each custodian from seeing — and optimising — only its own slice. If you would like an independent review of your existing portfolio, the natural starting point is a confidential second opinion.

You can verify everything from public sources, and I encourage you to do so. I have worked in finance since 1998, when I passed the CONSOB examination and was entered on the register of ‘promotori finanziari’ — today the single register of financial advisers. I am currently entered in the independent advisers’ section of the register kept by the OCF, by Resolution no. 2425 of 19 March 2024: my registration can be consulted by anyone in the public search of the OCF register. In 2024 I obtained the CFP® (CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™) certification, awarded to the standards of FPSB — the Financial Planning Standards Board, the international body that sets the professional standards of financial planning. For the full picture, from my years in banking to the choice of independence, you can read my journey.

They are all free, and I ask nothing in return. The guides download without any subscription and without leaving an address; the articles and the Insights are open to read; the simulators work without registration, with one declared exception: the succession tool gives one free calculation, and from the second it asks for a subscription to the monthly newsletter, which is free and can be left in one click (anyone already a client or already subscribed meets nothing). There is no paid tier and no form to fill in before reaching a file. I publish what I actually use with the families I advise, for two reasons: a reader forms a view of the method before ever writing to me, and on certain matters — costs paid without being seen, tax allowances, deadlines that do not come back — the right information is worth having even to someone who will never become a client. The only thing that is paid for is the advice. All the material is on the Resources page.

Whoever you choose sells it to you: your own insurance agent, a broker, or an online provider. What I do is identify and define the cover with you — what to protect, for what capital, with which limits, excesses and exclusions; you then take it out with someone authorised to place it. I am not an insurance intermediary and cannot be one: nothing reaches me from that policy, neither from the company nor from the intermediary. It is the same reason I place no funds and have no products to sell: my view on a policy is worth something precisely because it earns nothing from how things turn out. Specification first, quotations afterwards: the method is the one on the Risk management page.

No, and I prefer to say so beforehand rather than afterwards. My fee pays for my work: the analysis, the plan, the direction and the time I devote to your family. Deeds and reserved professional services remain with the qualified professionals — notary, accountant, lawyer — and are paid to them, at their own fee, as would happen in any case. What changes is that you neither have to find them nor coordinate them: I bring to the table whoever is needed, define their brief, check their work against the overall design, and tell you in advance when a step will carry an external cost, before it arises. No commission reaches me from any of them: if it did, the choice of professional would no longer be free.

Financial advice looks after the invested portfolio; a Family Office looks at wealth in its entirety — financial, real estate, corporate, pension-related — and holds its different dimensions together under a single point of direction. That means coordinating investments, protection, tax and generational transfer within one coherent plan, so that no area is dealt with in isolation. For a family with complex wealth, it is often the difference between receiving many good pieces of advice separately and having a strategy.

Yes: coordinating the family’s accountant, notary and lawyer is a central part of the work. The Family Office does not replace the family’s trusted professionals — it brings them around the same table and aligns their work towards a common goal. When needed, I add specialists from my own network to the team; in every case I remain the single point of reference holding the overall picture together, so that it is never the client who has to orchestrate the different parties.

The team is a network of professionals working alongside me, each responsible for one dimension of the family’s wealth: tax and corporate; tax law; family governance; non-profit organisations; philanthropy; real estate; financial market analysis; art and pleasure assets; and data analysis. Three of them are chartered accountants, and one is a full professor of tax law and a lawyer admitted to practise before the Court of Cassation. They are external collaborators — neither employees nor partners — a choice consistent with the firm’s independence, which allows me to select the most suitable expertise for each situation, free of structural constraints. Coordination, and responsibility for the client relationship, always remain with me. You can meet the professionals of the network, one by one, in the dedicated section of the Family Office page.

Yes — for an entrepreneurial family, personal and business wealth are deeply intertwined: decisions taken on one side are felt on the other, and treating them as separate compartments creates risk and inefficiency. I follow the business in the areas where it meets the family’s wealth — investing corporate liquidity, corporate finance transactions, risk protection, generational continuity — in an orchestrating role: I work alongside the advisers appointed for each transaction rather than replacing them, and I hold the picture together on the family’s side. You will find the detail on the services for businesses page.

The process begins with a first meeting that is free of charge, confidential and without obligation: its only purpose is to establish whether there are grounds for working together. There is nothing to prepare and no documents to bring — your questions are enough. If we decide to proceed, the next step is an analysis of your overall situation — financial, real estate, corporate and pension-related — at the end of which you receive a written proposal setting out the scope of the work and the fee in clear terms. Only then do you decide whether to entrust the engagement: no step is automatic, and each phase concludes before the next begins. The first step is the simplest one: request a meeting.

The engagement runs for a term defined in the contract, and you may end it with 30 days’ notice and no penalties. I regard this as an essential condition: the relationship should last because the service is worth it, not because you are locked in. However the relationship ends, the plan, the reports and the documents remain yours: they were built for your family and they go with you, together with the freedom to continue with whomever you wish. A simple, clean exit is not an administrative detail: it is tangible proof that the only reason to stay is the value you receive.

Once the engagement is under way, you have my full availability through simple channels: in person, by video call, by telephone or by email, according to your family’s habits. The work then follows an orderly rhythm: I share a consolidated report covering your entire wealth position — in full at least once a year, as regulation requires, with closer intervals agreed freely and prompt updates whenever they are needed or whenever something significant occurs. Between one report and the next, I remain your single point of contact for every decision that touches the wealth, and the client area stays open: the composition of your wealth, its performance over time, holdings in detail, securities account movements and your confidential documents, whenever you want to look.

Nothing essential would change, because your wealth does not depend on me operationally: it remains in custody with your banks and custodians, held in your name, and every plan is documented in writing and in your possession. You can act, or engage another professional, at any moment and with no compulsory steps; for work already in progress, the professionals in the network who are following it can see it through, each within their own field. You are always free and able to act, with documents that are yours: that is where real soundness lies, not in organisational promises.

It is the space where a client finds their wealth in a single place: the composition by instrument and by custodian, performance over time, holdings in detail, securities account movements and confidential documents. The figures are not a sample — they come from the actual data loaded for your wealth, and every line carries the date of the price at which it is valued: a value without its date says little, and I prefer to show it. You get in from Sign in, with the credentials I hand over once the engagement is under way: there is no open registration, because the area exists only for clients.

Yes, and it is an engagement that stands on its own: many families first came to know me that way. I look at the portfolio you have, with your banks and your documents, and hand you a written report on costs, risks, efficiency and consistency with your objectives. It ends there, if that is where you want it to end: the report is yours, and what to do with it, and with whom, is your decision. The analysis is charged as a fee, agreed in writing before starting and proportionate to the work it takes, because a portfolio at a single institution and wealth spread across five custodians do not ask for the same time. The full scope is on the Second opinion page.

No, never. I never take possession of your money, and I have no access to your current accounts or your custody accounts: your wealth remains at all times with your banks, held in your name. My role is purely advisory: every transaction is placed by you, with your own institutions. If you wish, I can stand beside you during execution and deal directly with your bank contacts, to verify that what was agreed is carried out correctly and on the agreed terms. It is not a practice I have chosen: it is a prohibition in law, and my pre-contractual disclosure sets it out word for word. This separation between the one who advises and the one who holds custody is not a commercial choice but a structural safeguard: it keeps the advice free of conflicts and keeps your wealth independent of whatever may happen to the adviser, today and tomorrow.

I work with the banks you already have: there is nothing to change and no accounts to transfer. For the families I look after, holding assets with several custodians — in Italy and abroad — is the norm, and my task is not to reduce them to one but to coordinate them: I consolidate every position into a single, independent consolidated report, compare terms and costs across institutions and, where useful, stand beside you in renegotiating them. When those banks are also the company’s, that work has a page of its own: treasury and credit, where facilities, guarantees and terms are read together. With your private bankers the relationship is one of technical collaboration: they execute; I bring the overall direction and objective points of comparison to the table. If, over time, an institution no longer proved adequate on costs or service, we would assess it together — a possible conclusion, never a premise.

Confidentiality is a working condition, not an optional extra. The family’s data and documents are processed in compliance with data protection legislation and shared only with those actually involved in an agreed activity. In the client area, documents are encrypted one by one; positions and transactions are tied to a number, not to a name, and no names or tax codes appear in the database. Discretion over people, figures and decisions is part of how I understand the profession.

I approach generational wealth transfer with a method, not a formula. The work begins with a complete picture of the wealth and its structures — the business, property, financial assets, shareholdings — and with the family's objectives: who will join the business and who will not, and what balance to strike among the heirs. On that basis we define the governance and the shared rules, and only then the instruments, assessed case by case: lifetime gifts, family pacts, holding companies, insurance policies, trusts. The formal deeds remain with the qualified professionals — notaries, accountants, lawyers — while I provide the single point of direction, so that every step stays consistent with the overall design and with the family's own timing. When the business is at the centre, you can read the method step by step on the page dedicated to generational wealth transfer; when the question is instead the governance of the family, the perimeter is that of succession and governance.

No: tax opinions, returns and filings are matters reserved to qualified professionals, and that is how they remain. My role is a different one: coordinating the tax dimension of the wealth. Tax runs through every wealth decision, which is why my team includes three accountants; when the family already has its own trusted professionals, I work with them. My job is to ensure that decisions on investments and structures — from the choice of instruments to corporate arrangements — are also assessed from a tax perspective together with the qualified professionals, and remain coordinated with one another within a single overall vision: I make sure that accountants and tax lawyers talk to each other, and to the overall plan. When that coordination becomes a project in its own right, with vehicles, ownership structures and cross-border profiles to put in order, the perimeter is that of wealth and tax planning.

No, and I would be wary of anyone who does. No serious professional can promise a return, because the markets do not allow it. My task is a different one: to build a strategy consistent with the client's objectives and with the risk they are willing to bear, to contain the costs and mistakes that erode capital over time, and to accompany them with discipline in favourable phases as well as difficult ones. The value of advice is measured by the soundness of the choices, not by a promise.

I build portfolios around objectives, not products. I have no instruments to place, and so no favourite instrument either: selection is made case by case, favouring solutions that are cost-efficient and consistent with the horizon and risk of each objective. The principles are few and stable: broad diversification; control of costs — the only variable known in advance; consistency between the risk taken and the risk that can genuinely be borne; discipline in difficult phases. I do not bet on the right moment to enter or exit the market: chasing it is, in practice, one of the most frequent ways of destroying value. How this method applies to financial wealth is set out on the Wealth Management page. I explore the rest in the Insights and the guides I publish.

Absolutely not, and each tool says so on its own page. They are published for information: the cost simulator sets out costs exactly as the product’s own document, its KID, declares them, and passes no judgement on them; the succession one applies the shares of the civil code and an estimate of the taxes in force; the pension one applies tax rules and historical returns to assumptions you choose yourself. A product appearing in the archive does not mean I recommend it, and its absence does not mean the opposite: the archive holds what the companies publish. They are not financial advice, an investment recommendation or an assessment of the products. A personal recommendation arises only within an engagement, after looking at your own situation. The simulators are published in Italian only: they are listed on the Italian Resources page.

My Multi Family Office serves entrepreneurial families and individuals with complex wealth — several banks, a business, property, succession needs — and deliberately follows a limited number of families. I have not set an entry threshold in euros: the service delivers its value when the wealth is spread across several dimensions and several counterparties, rather than once a particular figure is crossed. That is why the first meeting also serves to establish together, candidly, whether a single point of direction of this kind is proportionate to your situation — including the balance of costs and benefits: when it is not, I say so openly, and where possible I point you towards the more suitable route. The two ways in are the path for families and the one for companies.

Yes: property, art and collectables are wealth in the fullest sense — they enter the overall strategy and the reporting alongside the financial component. In these areas I am supported by dedicated professionals: the team includes a real estate adviser and an adviser for pleasure assets — art, collections, valuables. The work covers valuations, acquisitions and disposals, custody, insurance cover and documentation, through to transfer to the next generations. The aim is that even the assets that never pass through a custody account have a recognised value, orderly management and a precise place in the family’s wealth plan. For valuations, deeds and cover I coordinate the qualified professionals in my network: I do not sell property, broker works of art or place insurance. The full perimeter is set out on the Real estate and pleasure assets page.

HNWI, VHNWI and UHNWI are international classifications indicating the wealth brackets of affluent individuals, based on investable wealth — that is, the financial assets available, usually excluding the primary residence. The thresholds most widely used in international industry reports are stated in US dollars: HNWI (High Net Worth Individual), from around one million dollars; VHNWI (Very High Net Worth Individual), between 5 and 30 million dollars; UHNWI (Ultra High Net Worth Individual), above 30 million. They are indicative conventions, not legal categories, and serve above all to frame different needs: the larger and more complex the wealth becomes — across finance, real estate, business and several jurisdictions — the more valuable a single point of direction such as that of a Multi Family Office becomes.

We meet wherever is most convenient for you: at the offices in Rome, Milan and Turin, at the family's own home, or remotely, in protected environments that safeguard the confidentiality of documents and conversations. In Geneva I keep a representative office — a presence in one of the leading centres for wealth management, where I nurture international relationships. I do indeed look after families with assets, activities or members in several countries: in those cases the work consists of coordinating the parties and rules of different jurisdictions within a single plan. Advisory activity is carried out in Italy, in compliance with Italian legislation.