Novum currently manages nearly ten billion dollars for just over forty families. Over the past eight years, the multi-family office has scaled up without changing course, gradually structuring its teams and areas of expertise to handle increasing complexity. Gabriele Gallotti reflects on this journey and on the conviction that growth is meaningful only if it remains controlled and focused on quality.
What services do you offer today that you hadn’t anticipated when Novum was founded?
We do not currently offer any services that we had not anticipated from the very beginning of Novum. Our ambition was to build an outsourced single-family office for the families we serve, providing the most comprehensive coverage possible of their wealth management needs—with the deliberate exception of concierge services.
However, what has changed profoundly is not so much the nature of the services as their intensity, their depth, and above all, the profile of the families who have joined us. Initially, we had in mind a clientele with assets ranging from 50 to 250 million francs or dollars. That was our implicit frame of reference. Eight years later, this baseline has shifted considerably. We now work very regularly with families with several hundred million, some of whom are already organized around internal family office-type structures. In these cases, our role naturally changes. We complement existing arrangements, reinforce certain areas of expertise, or take charge of areas that families do not wish to further internalize.
Two areas, however, have taken on a level of importance that I had not anticipated. The first is estate planning. Over time, the relationship of trust has deepened to the point where families entrust us with extremely sensitive matters. It is no longer just a matter of traditional wealth structuring, but of continuity planning, organizing for unforeseen events, and detailed documentation of existing structures, accounts, legal vehicles, and key contacts. In some cases, this even involves preparing detailed instruction manuals for spouses or children.
The second pillar is wealth consolidation. We made the decision very early on to handle this in-house, even though it is likely one of the most operationally demanding activities. It would have been much simpler to outsource it, as many market players do. Over time, this decision has proven to be one of our most distinctive strengths. By maintaining complete control over the process, we are able to create a fully customized consolidated financial statement for each family, as well as reporting tailored to its structure, needs, and approach to managing its wealth.
How has your service offering evolved and expanded over time?
The most significant evolution has undoubtedly been in alternative investments. When Novum was launched, they played a relatively minor role. We preferred public markets, which were more transparent, more liquid, and more familiar. But our experience in the field quickly changed that perception. Families express genuine, structural needs for private assets—whether in private equity, real estate, private debt, or infrastructure. And these needs are not incidental; they are central to building and managing a modern portfolio.
We have therefore gradually strengthened our resources and expertise in this area. Private assets cannot be improvised. Investment horizons are long, structures can be complex, and the consequences of a bad decision can be felt for a long time. In hindsight, this was undoubtedly the right course of action. This kind of expertise cannot be decreed.
The other major transformation concerns technology. Eight years ago, I probably wouldn’t have imagined the extent to which it would come to play in our model. Today, it accounts for a significant portion of our internal investments. It isn’t directly visible to clients, but it has become fundamental to everything related to operational efficiency, data quality, consolidation, and team coordination.
Today, on which services do you primarily focus your value proposition?
I think the question is almost misleading. We don’t sell isolated services. We sell comprehensive execution capabilities. Every family has its own priorities. Some are very investment-focused, while others are more concerned with wealth structuring, family governance, financing, or succession planning. It would be artificial to rank these aspects in order of importance.
Our model is actually based on two main areas. The first is the family office in the broad sense. It encompasses wealth consolidation, banking relationships, loans, payments, legal structuring, and estate planning. The second is the investment universe, which covers both traditional markets and private assets.
But the true value does not lie in the segmentation of these services. It lies in their integration and in the ability to deliver a level of analysis and execution that the client did not necessarily expect. That is often where the difference lies—in the gap between what is expected and what is actually delivered.
What has been the most noticeable change in your client base since Novum was founded?
It concerns the average size of our client relationships. We currently serve 45 families for whom we manage $10 billion in assets. And as I mentioned earlier, we now work very regularly with families who hold several hundred million. They were clearly not our initial target clients.
But beyond the wealth threshold, it’s the nature of the request that matters to us. We seek out families who want a comprehensive and integrated approach, without fragmentation of the relationship. We do not create value by managing an isolated portion of a family’s wealth. Value is realized when we have a comprehensive understanding of the entire estate: structures, cash flows, legal constraints, and family dynamics. It is only under these conditions that our model becomes fully relevant.
How do you see the expectations of these families evolving over time?
Fundamentally, I don’t think expectations have changed fundamentally. What is changing is the context. Media and macroeconomic cycles—pandemics, inflation, geopolitical tensions, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies—follow one another at a very rapid pace. Each time, there’s a sense of a structural shift.
But when we look at wealth management over the long term, the fundamentals remain surprisingly stable. Discipline, consistency, risk management, and a long-term vision are still the core principles. Our role often involves guiding families back to these fundamentals, helping them avoid overreacting to trends or market cycles. The most noticeable shift concerns private assets, but it reflects our ability to respond to these changes rather than the emergence of an entirely new need.
Where do you see your main growth opportunities?
My view of growth has changed profoundly over time. I remember that at the very beginning of the Novum journey, I deliberately wanted to limit our growth. I was convinced that beyond a certain size, the quality of service would inevitably decline. Eight years later, I have to admit that reality has changed my mind.
Our growth has been far greater than anything I could have imagined. But it hasn’t come at the expense of quality. This has led me to realize that the real challenge isn’t growth itself, but the quality of that growth.
I like to talk about sustainable growth. It’s not the assets under management that make our business difficult to scale. It’s the families we serve. Today, we manage nearly $10 billion for 46 families, with a team of 45 employees. It’s this balance that allows us to maintain an extremely high level of service.
But growth isn’t just about numbers. To grow, we must also be able to attract the best talent—people who don’t join a company solely for a salary. They want to be part of an adventure, a vision, an ambition, and to have a real success story to tell. We must then retain them, giving them the sense that they themselves are contributing to this value creation and that they are part of Novum’s “equity story.”
The most encouraging aspect is that this is a virtuous cycle. If we continue to meet our key performance indicators—namely, sustainable growth, rigorous hiring standards, and consistent service quality—then our clients will naturally continue to grow their wealth. And when wealth is well managed, it naturally tends to grow over time.
What are the key figures for understanding Novum’s trajectory since 2018?
We currently serve 45 families, with approximately $10 billion in assets under supervision, and we employ 45 staff members. What stands out is the nearly linear relationship between the number of families and the number of our staff members. One family, one employee. This symmetry is no coincidence. It says something essential about our business and the way we’ve chosen to conduct it. Above all, we rely on people.
How do you scale a multi-family office while maintaining a high level of personalization?
In our model, personalization cannot be standardized. It depends on the quality of our teams and their ability to handle complexity. That is why growth and recruitment must absolutely proceed at the same pace.