CFA Society New York Annual Single Family Office Conference

CFA Society New York runs an annual conference for single family offices, now in its seventh year. The society is the New York member body of the CFA Institute, the organisation behind the chartered financial analyst qualification, and its events are built for investment professionals rather than for a general audience.

That host makes this different from most events in this directory. Commercial conference companies build programmes around what will sell sponsorship. A professional membership body builds them around what its members need to know, and the result is more technical and less promotional.

Who attends

The audience is single family office investment leaders and the investment professionals who work with them: chief investment officers, portfolio staff and analysts. The society describes the conference as a high-level discussion of major investment themes and global market dynamics, which sets the register accurately.

This is not a governance or succession event, and it is not aimed at principals who leave investing to their staff. It is for the people inside a family office who actually construct the portfolio.

How access works

Registration is paid and open through the society's site. Member and non-member rates apply and are shown at the registration step rather than on the event listing, so the figure has to be checked at the point of booking.

Joining CFA Society New York is worth considering separately for anyone who attends more than one of its events a year, since member rates apply across the calendar rather than to this conference alone. The society runs a substantial programme of investment events through the year, of which the family office conference is one specialist strand.

What attendees get

A day of sessions on investment themes and market conditions, delivered at the level a professional body's members expect. The society has run this conference for enough years to have built a consistent format, and the earlier editions are archived on its site, which lets you see what previous programmes covered before committing.

For a family office in or near New York with investment staff, the case is straightforward: technical content, a credible host, no sponsor pitching from the stage, and a one-day commitment in the city. It is a poor substitute for a peer forum if what you want is other principals, and an unusually good use of a day if what you want is the investment discussion itself.