What Should a Family Office Learn About a Manager's Business Continuity Plan?

A family office should learn how a manager will keep essential fund work moving when people, systems, premises, or providers are unavailable. The useful test is whether the plan assigns responsibility and preserves controls during a disruption, not whether a policy document exists.

Identify Essential Work and Owners

Ask the manager which activities must continue to protect fund assets and meet obligations. Depending on the fund, this may include access to records, payment approvals, investor communications, trade decisions, and coordination with administrators or custodians. For each activity, ask who is responsible and who can take over if that person is unavailable.

Request a continuity plan or operational recovery summary showing roles, escalation paths, and backup arrangements. Ask how the manager handles the loss of its primary office, email, a key executive, or access to a core system. Look for responsibilities that are assigned to roles, not only to one named individual. A plan that depends on one person with no alternate creates a practical gap.

Examine Dependencies and Controls

Ask which outside providers support essential fund activity and what happens if one stops operating or cannot be reached. Find out whether the fund can access its records, move work to another provider, or continue core approvals during an outage. The manager should explain how it avoids weakening payment or trade controls in an emergency. Ask whether temporary workarounds are approved and documented.

Useful questions include:

• "Which fund activities must continue during a disruption, and who owns each one?"
• "Who can take over if the person responsible is unavailable?"
• "How would you access fund records if your main systems were down?"
• "Which providers are essential, and what is the alternative if service stops?"
• "How do you keep payment approvals and investor communications controlled during recovery?"

For a closer look at providers that support fund operations, see the fund vendor exposure guide.

Check Recovery and Communication Evidence

Ask where critical records are backed up, who can restore them, and how the manager checks that restoration works. Request a summary of a continuity exercise, what it exposed, and which follow-up actions remain open. A plan that has not been exercised may leave assumptions untested. Ask how investors receive updates if operations are interrupted, who sends them, and how the manager separates confirmed facts from unresolved questions.

Compare the manager's plan with the way the fund actually operates. If approvals, records, or investor updates depend on a single person or provider, ask for a specific backup and evidence it is usable. Record unresolved items and assign a follow-up owner in your diligence process.

Checklist

• List essential fund activities and assigned owners.
• Confirm an alternate for each critical role.
• Map dependencies on systems and outside providers.
• Check how approvals continue during an outage.
• Request recovery and exercise evidence.
• Confirm how investors receive disruption updates.

Read next: How should investors evaluate a fund's data security and incident response? and What happens to fund operations if its administrator or custodian fails?

The firms which make it to the top 5% of the industry and stay there have documented processes and procedures that are followed by everyone on the team.

Sources: Family Office Club investor due diligence framework, The Family Office Book. Informational only, not financial, legal or tax advice.