As a Partner and head of private clients and family offices at PwC Switzerland, Lisa Cornwell Webb advises some of the world’s wealthiest families.

It’s work she’s more than qualified for, having spent over 20 years advising international families and the institutions around them, based in both the United Kingdom and Switzerland, in banking and at the Big Four. 

“That mix matters and has informed my approach to my clients,” says Cornwell Webb. “Sitting on the bank side taught me how families are actually serviced day-to-day, which is quite different from how many advisers assume they are.”

Her experience has made her highly skeptical of any companies offering one-size-fits-all solutions, because her work has shown there just isn’t a single, typical client archetype.

“There genuinely isn't one, and I'd be wary of anyone who claims otherwise. What they share isn't a region or an AUM figure—it's complexity. A family with three passports, businesses in two continents, and children who want different things is our typical client, whether they hold 50 million Swiss Francs or several billion.”

Cornwell Webb’s role involves a lot of hands-on work in cross-border tax structuring, governance, and succession, which means understanding clients well. 

“A lot of the value is unglamorous: asking the questions the family hasn't asked itself yet. Who actually makes decisions? What happens when the founder steps back? The technical structuring is often the easier part of the jigsaw —getting the family aligned can be far harder!” 

It’s personal work, and not the kind that can be easily replaced by technology, and though she says AI is starting to play a valuable support role, clients generally don’t want it near their data.

“We are using AI in the background for administrative and repetitive, low-value tasks that are necessary to serve our clients well. We also use AI as a co-creator to supplement our thinking as it can bring a different perspective to us.” 

“That said, we have more and more clients who explicitly ask that we do not yet use AI at all when it comes to their solutions as they value discretion of data so highly. I suspect that this will change in the coming years.” 

Working with international clients from around the world means she has encountered all types of families, each with their own ideas around how a family office should look. 

She highlights a common mistake is to focus on setting up a structure before deciding what it's actually for, or understanding the nuances of a region.

“Families rush to establish an entity, hire a team, start investing —then work out their risk appetite, their purpose, their values afterwards. It should be the reverse. The second mistake is underestimating substance: Switzerland only works if real people are making real decisions here. A "brass plate" set-up creates risk, not protection.

Every wealth hub has its own unique mix that makes it attractive to wealthy families, but sometimes someone’s desired location doesn’t make sense.

“We are truly agnostic when it comes to finding the best option for our clients - being neutral and driven solely by the family's needs is the most useful value-add we give.” 

“If a family's wealth, business, and next generation all sit in Asia for example, forcing a Swiss hub adds cost and friction for little benefit. Being willing to say ‘this isn't right for you’ is precisely what earns us the trust to advise them—and they know they can trust us if we say Switzerland is the right answer.”

Switzerland might have been overtaken by Hong Kong as the world's largest cross-border wealth hub, but as we highlighted recently, there isn’t much concern in the Alpine country.

“Families are multi-hubbed and considering which jurisdiction is right for which piece of their lives,” says Cornwell Webb. “They can run their operational hub where their life is—Dubai, Singapore—and use Switzerland for what it does well: preservation, banking, neutral access to Europe.” 

She believes that the country’s reputation for stability will remain important, but isn’t enough on its own, with client needs evolving.

“The families we'll be serving in twenty years care about different things—making strategic direct investments, about technology, impact, purpose, and the next generation's values, not only ‘classic’ capital preservation.” 

“Capital is ever more mobile and ever more international. Switzerland's challenge is to stay relevant to those priorities, rather than assuming its history guarantees its future; but there is such great depth of experience here and such a strong track record for innovation that I am confident Switzerland will continue to be a leading global hub for wealth in the years to come.” 

For Cornwell Webb, the most rewarding part of her work is seeing a family arrive divided or anxious and delivering a solution that works for them.

“The technical work is satisfying, but I started working in private client work because I was interested in people and emotions, so it's always the human outcome that stays with me. It's also usually the thing the clients didn't know they needed when they first walked in!”

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