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During the "Family money: treasure or poison?" conference organised by Banque de Luxembourg, Pierre Sorlut from Luxemburger Wort talked to philosopher, psychotherapist and author Nicole Prieur, and Philippe Depoorter, Family Practice Leader at Banque de Luxembourg, in a joint interview on family money.

According to the philosopher, psychotherapist and author Nicole Prieur, money is both precious and toxic for families who have it. "Having it isn't necessarily comforting but not having it is a real worry," is how this French academic and practitioner sums it up. But behind the issue lie other much more testing challenges. They appear at key moments in life: birth, marriage, the acquisition of a property or when an estate or business is passed on.

"It's an issue that concerns us all," says Philippe Depoorter, Member of the Management Committee at Banque de Luxembourg, a resolutely family-focused bank. "And us as bankers in particular," he concedes, aware of the possibility of engaging the Bank's clients across the generations when he plays his role of facilitator. The fact is that "money can be a heavy burden," says Mr Depoorter who sometimes sees that "family money" has replaced the "family backbone". Every day, as a banker, Depoorter sees parents who want to pass on their wealth (capital, property or business) to the next generation without creating conflict within the family. That is often the time when all the things that have been building up, unsaid between siblings, come to the fore.

"The objects that are transferred from the parents to the children symbolise an entire family history and the position in it that the parents confer on their children," says the psychotherapist. "All the objects convey implicit or unconscious messages," she says. And the family will end up going to the lawyer to sort it all out.

"Unravel the family ties," says Philippe Depoorter

Mr Depoorter, why would a bank invite a philosopher-psychotherapist to talk to its clients ?

We have private clients who have a personal and business life. In wealth management, we support family business owners who are the main purveyors and creators of wealth in Luxembourg and Europe. Whether their wealth is financial capital or a business, there are two sides to it: material and immaterial. And we deal face-to-face with people whose accounts we have managed for a very long time. With banking secrecy and all that it involves as well as trust, in the past we avoided considering the person. We managed bank accounts, a pile of money, and our job was to make the pile bigger.

But Banque de Luxembourg has evolved...

The profile of its client base has changed considerably. Since the new regulations that came in a few years ago and the lifting of banking secrecy, the number of clients at Luxembourg banks has fallen significantly but the size of their fortunes has increased hugely. These clients have more sophisticated and complex needs. On the business front, the number of companies being sold or transferred has increased in Luxembourg as well as Europe.

Why spend time on interpersonal relationships?

When it comes to passing on wealth, we would be failing in our duty as bankers if we did not take into account the life and history of the people who created it or those whose role will be to spend it or build on it. With this in mind, we cannot limit our role to managing and passing on wealth, we must take account of these parameters and go beyond them. This is how I came to establish the role of accompaniment which forms part of our "family office" services.

Does this mean bankers have to be psychologists?

It's not because we are dealing with people and the immaterial dimension that we have an interest in psychology. No. We decided to define our sphere of interest, where we can or cannot help our clients. In philanthropy, you talk about value and history. When you talk to clients, you tease out threads. Sometimes, operating in this way can trigger a flood of thoughts.

What can a banker do?

The bank has an interest in helping its clients develop their plans. When the family is confronted with a thorny knot, we help unravel it, so that we can continue to work on the separate threads. In the background, we have financial engineers and all sorts of specialists we can call on to enable the assets to work for the success of a project. The banker is a facilitator. We try to enable people around a table to build a consensus together and agree on something which will have a lasting impact. The idea is that a third party can help in a situation when things go adrift, when a balance has been upset. This often happens when wealth is transferred. Then there is the aspect of getting the 'next gen' involved to facilitate dialogue with the programmes in place.

Do you call psychologists to the rescue?

We have established certain procedures for helping families. This has required us to set up a number of rules, especially regarding recourse to specialists. There is no doubt that psychology plays a role in this type of situation and rather than try to do everything, we call on experts. There are times when I have had to suggest to families that they enlist a psychologist. My role is to introduce them. I'm just a coordinator.

Source: Luxemburger Wort of 5 July 2017

Read this article on family money on paperjam.lu: http://paperjam.lu/news/largent-reste-un-tabou-familial

Learn more about our support for families in business: Family Practice

 

 

 


 

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