Middle East & wider EMEA Europe
Families and business owners establishing a European base — an EU holding structure, an operating company, residence, banking and the reporting that comes with them.
Approach
Independent, boutique, and paid by one side of the table.
Three commitments decide how this practice behaves. They cost us revenue that other firms take, which is precisely why they are worth stating.
I
Independence
We hold no products and distribute none. We accept no commission, retrocession, introducer fee or referral income from any bank, fund, insurer, developer or platform — including on work we send out. Our entire revenue comes from the families who engage us, so the advice has nothing behind it.
II
Boutique by design
A family holding €4 million is a rounding error to a large institution and a full mandate here. We keep the practice small enough that the people in the first conversation remain the people doing the work, and we take on a limited number of families for the same reason.
III
Discretion
No client names, no case studies, no logos, no testimonials — on this website or anywhere else. What a family owns, and what it is planning, is not marketing material. Expect the same silence about your own file.
Scope
Europe and EMEA, in two directions.
We work across Europe and the wider EMEA region. Almost every mandate runs along one of two corridors, and holding both inside one practice is deliberate: the European and the Gulf side of a family's position get decided together, rather than in sequence by two firms who never speak to each other.
Europe Middle East
European families extending into the Gulf — a UAE structure alongside the European one, with the substance, governance and tax positions considered together rather than in sequence.
Where a mandate reaches a jurisdiction we do not cover directly, we say so and engage local counsel rather than improvising. The list of places we are genuinely useful is shorter than a map of the region, and we would rather be precise about it.
The year
What a year with the practice looks like.
01
Onboarding
Four to six weeks to assemble the complete inventory and agree the written mandate. Most of the first year's value is created here, before anything is built.
02
Quarterly reporting
A consolidated statement and a meeting every quarter. Short, written in plain language, and circulated in advance rather than presented on the day.
03
Annual review
Structures, wills, tax positions, insurance and adviser mandates re-examined once a year against what actually changed — a birth, a sale, a move, a new rule.
04
In between
An offer arrives, a bank asks a question, someone dies. The decisions that matter rarely wait for the calendar, and access between meetings is part of the fee rather than an extra.
Fees
A fixed fee, agreed before the work starts.
The mandate is charged as a fixed annual fee, set against the scope written into it and reviewed once a year. Structuring and transaction work is quoted separately as a fixed project fee before it begins.
We do not charge a percentage of assets. A percentage fee rises when markets rise and quietly rewards the adviser for recommending that more is brought under their supervision — neither of which is connected to the work being done.
There is no charge for the first conversation, and no charge for telling a family that it does not need us yet.
The firm
Indicium.
Indicium is a small professional group. Its established arm is an independent IT consultancy serving clients internationally; this practice is its private-office and advisory arm, built for families in the band below the conventional family office threshold.
The two arms share a name, a standard of work and a preference for independence over volume. They do not share client information.
First step
The first hour costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
It is a conversation about what you hold and what worries you — not a pitch, and not a proposal.
Arrange a conversation