Discretionary management
You set the mandate; we execute inside it. Rebalancing, tax-lot selection, and manager changes happen without a call, and every trade appears on your statement the day it settles.
From ₩3bn · quarterly review
Private Banking · Seoul · Established 1999
Stewardship measured in
decades, not quarters.
We look after 612 families through market cycles, business sales, and the handover from one generation to the next. We accept a limited number of new relationships each year, because attention is the one thing that does not scale.
- Under stewardship
- ₩24.8T
- Client families
- 612
- Average tenure
- 14 yrs
- Families per banker
- 18
How we are structured
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Independent custody
Your assets are held in your own name at a third-party custodian. We hold the mandate, never the money.
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Fee-only, always
No retrocessions, placement fees, or distribution rebates. One invoice, disclosed before you sign anything.
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One committee since 1999
The same investment committee has signed every allocation change for twenty-seven years. Minutes go to clients.
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Reporting you can read
Every custodian consolidated onto one statement, in one currency, with a ten-minute quarterly letter attached.
01 — Philosophy
Three convictions that have not changed since the first mandate.
Strategy is revised every quarter. These three are not. They are written into the mandate documents so that a future banker cannot quietly drop them.
01
Preservation comes before performance.
The first question in a review is never what we earned. It is what we could have lost. Mandates are built to survive a decade in which nothing goes as planned: liquidity held deliberately rather than left over, concentration capped in writing, currency exposure hedged to the currency of your actual obligations rather than the one on the statement.
Return is what remains after that discipline. Over twenty-seven years it has been enough, and it has arrived without the years that force families to change their plans.
02
You pay us. Nobody else does.
We receive no retrocessions, no placement fees, and no distribution rebates from any manager, insurer, or issuer. Every instrument we recommend is one we would hold at the same price if introducing it paid us nothing — because it does.
The invoice is one line: a percentage of the assets we look after, billed quarterly, agreed in full before you sign. If a third party ever sends us money in connection with your account, it is credited to your account.
03
The plan should outlive the market view.
Views change; obligations do not. School fees in six years, a company sale in five, a foundation the family intends to endow — these are the fixed points we build around, and they are the only things allowed to move the architecture.
When the committee revises its outlook, the portfolio moves at the margin. The structure stays where it was. Clients who have been with us through three cycles will tell you the plan looks remarkably similar to the one they signed.
“A portfolio should be able to survive the years in which its owner is not paying attention.”
Investment letter, 2026 · Investment Committee
02 — Services
Six mandates, one relationship.
Families rarely need only one of these, and they should never need six different bankers to get them. Whatever combination you hold, the same lead banker signs for all of it and the same statement reports on all of it.
Advisory mandate
You keep the final decision. We bring the research, the position sizing, and a banker who will tell you plainly when we disagree with you — in writing, before the trade rather than after it.
From ₩3bn · unlimited calls
Structuring & succession
Holding structures, shareholder agreements, and the difficult conversation about who runs the business next. We coordinate your own lawyers and accountants rather than replacing them.
Project or retained
Private markets
Closed-end funds, co-investments, and secondaries at a commitment size a single family can meet. Drawdowns are paced so that a capital call never forces a sale somewhere else in the portfolio.
From ₩10bn · 3–4 funds a year
Credit & liquidity
Lombard lines against the portfolio, bridge facilities around a property purchase or a company sale, and standby liquidity so that a good asset is never sold at a bad hour.
Arranged, not underwritten
Family office services
Consolidated reporting across every custodian you use, philanthropic administration, and a governance calendar that keeps the family meeting on the diary instead of on the agenda for next year.
From ₩50bn · dedicated team
03 — Engagement
What a relationship costs, before you ask.
Three levels of coverage. The fee is the whole fee — custody and trading are billed at cost by the custodian and shown separately on your statement.
| Mandate | Minimum | Annual fee | Review cadence | Who covers you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core | ₩3bn | 0.75% | Semi-annual, in person | Lead banker + analyst |
| Signature Most held | ₩10bn | 0.55% | Quarterly, plus event calls | Lead banker, strategist, tax counsel |
| Family Office | ₩50bn | Fixed retainer | Monthly, and on call | Dedicated team of five |
Illustrative figures for demonstration. Fees are agreed in writing before any mandate begins.
04 — Approach
The first ninety days, in five movements.
Nothing is invested until the fourth step. Families are sometimes surprised by how long we spend on paper before we spend anything on markets.
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Weeks 1–2
Listening
Two long conversations with nothing to sign. We ask about obligations, timelines, and the outcomes that would genuinely worry you. Most of it is not about markets — it is about a business, a family, and a date on a calendar.
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Weeks 3–4
Mapping
A written picture of everything you own, wherever it sits — including the illiquid parts most statements leave off. Duplicated risk usually surfaces here: three managers who all turn out to own the same eight companies.
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Weeks 5–7
Constructing
A proposed mandate with the constraints written down: what we may never hold, how much cash stays untouched regardless of opportunity, which currency the plan is measured in, and who may instruct us.
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From month 2
Governing
Custody opens in your name at an independent bank. Signing authorities, reporting recipients, and successor instructions are recorded before the first trade — not after someone needs them.
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Ongoing
Reviewing
A quarterly letter you can read in ten minutes, an annual sit-down with everyone who signs, and a call from us — never the other way round — whenever something material changes.
05 — Record
The shape of the line matters more than its end point.
Two portfolios can finish a decade in the same place and be entirely different propositions to live through. The chart below shows a representative balanced mandate against a conventional reference allocation over ten years.
Representative balanced mandate
Conventional 60/40 reference
2016 → 2026
- Ten-year annualised
- 7.4%
- Worst twelve months
- −9.2%
- Recovery time
- 11 mo
- Client retention
- 97%
Net of our fee, before tax, in won.
Against −21.6% for the reference allocation.
From trough back to the prior high-water mark.
Families staying beyond a full market cycle.
Illustrative demonstration data for a hypothetical mandate. Figures do not describe any real portfolio and are not a forecast. Past performance is not a guide to future results, and the value of investments can fall as well as rise.
06 — Succession
Four in ten of our families are inside a handover right now.
It rarely arrives as a single event. It arrives as a founder stepping back one day a week, a daughter joining the board, a buyer making an approach, and a shareholder agreement written for a company that no longer exists in that form. The financial questions are the easy half.
Our work is to make the transition legible: who owns what, who decides what, and what happens on the day nobody wants to plan for. We put it on one page, we keep it current, and we make sure the next generation has met us long before they need us.
- A single ownership map covering operating company, holdings, property, and portfolio.
- A liquidity plan for the tax that falls due whether or not anything has been sold.
- A family charter drafted with your counsel, reviewed annually, signed by everyone.
- A standing introduction between the next generation and the banker who will serve them.
“The handover took three years. The document that made it possible was four pages long.”
Head of Wealth Structuring
07 — People
The people who answer the phone.
Four partners, forty-one bankers and analysts, and no call centre. You will know the name of everyone who can move money in your account, and they will know the names of your children.
Hong Gildong
Managing Partner
Founded the practice in 1999 after eleven years in institutional fixed income. Chairs the investment committee and still keeps nine client families of his own.
Seo Yuna
Chief Investment Officer
Sets asset allocation and signs every manager change. Writes the quarterly letter herself, which is why it reads like a letter rather than a brochure.
Min Jaehyun
Head of Wealth Structuring
Qualified in tax law before joining. Spends most of his week in rooms with families’ own lawyers, translating between generations as often as between statutes.
Park Dahye
Head of Private Markets
Sources and paces every commitment. Has declined considerably more funds than she has approved, and keeps the list of both.
08 — Client notes
What families say when we are not in the room.
“They talked us out of a transaction that would have been very good for their fee and very bad for us. That was in the second month.”
“The first statement they sent was the first time I had ever seen everything our family owns on a single page. I read it twice.”
“When the market fell, nobody called to ask what we wanted to do. They called to tell us what they had already done, and why.”
09 — Insights
Written for clients, published for anyone.
Investment letterMarch 2026
Why we hold more cash than our peers
Cash is treated as a drag until the quarter it becomes the only asset that can act. We explain how the reserve is sized, when it is allowed to fall, and what it bought us in 2020 and again in 2022.
6 min read
Structuring noteFebruary 2026
Selling a company: the twelve months before
Almost every decision that determines what a founder keeps is taken in the year before a sale process opens. A checklist of the eleven that matter most, and the three that cannot be undone afterwards.
9 min read
Committee memoJanuary 2026
Private markets when everyone has access
Democratised access has changed what a private allocation is worth. Our revised pacing rules, the fund sizes we now decline on principle, and why we would rather commit less more often.
7 min read
10 — Questions
The six we are asked first.
If yours is not here, ask it at the first meeting. We would rather answer an uncomfortable question early than have it sit unspoken for a decade.
What is the minimum to open a relationship?
₩3bn for a Core mandate. We make exceptions where a liquidity event is already under way and the mandate will cross that level within the year, but we say so in writing rather than quietly waiving it.
Do you hold our assets yourselves?
No. Assets sit at an independent custodian in your own name, and you can see them without going through us. We hold a mandate to instruct, which you can withdraw on a single business day’s notice.
How exactly are you paid?
One quarterly fee calculated on the assets under mandate, at the rate in the table above. No performance fee, no transaction charge from us, and no payment from any product provider. Custody and dealing costs are the custodian’s and appear at cost.
Can we keep our existing bank?
Most families do, particularly where a lending relationship is involved. We can advise on assets held elsewhere and consolidate them into one report even when we do not manage them.
What happens if our banker leaves?
Every family is covered by two named bankers from day one, and the mandate documents record the reasoning behind the portfolio rather than keeping it in one person’s head. Continuity is a structural commitment, not a promise about individuals.
How quickly can we take money out?
Liquid holdings settle in two to three business days and there is no exit charge or notice period. Private market commitments follow their own fund terms, which is precisely why we size them against the rest of the plan.
11 — Contact
A first conversation, with nothing to sign.
Ninety minutes, in our office or yours. You will leave with a written summary of what we heard and an honest view on whether we are the right firm for it — which in roughly one case in five is no.
- Office
- 123 Webis-ro, Webis-gu,
Seoul 12345, KR - Private line
- 1900-0000
- hello@webis.example
- Meetings
- Weekdays 09:00–18:00, and by arrangement outside those hours.