High Net Worth Due Diligence
For several decades, Infortal has worked with ultra-high net worth individuals (including billionaires) and Family Funds Offices to protect their families, assets and properties.
We provide exceptional levels of investigative due diligence on their personal staff at home and at vacation properties to make sure that they are well protected from con artists, criminals and others who may have malintent and from causing unnecessary harm.
We also conduct security vulnerability assessments to make sure executives’ homes are protected, as well as executive travel protection services (both armed and close protection) to keep executives and their family members safe at all times.
Have questions about high net worth due diligence? Read more below.
What is High Net Worth Due Diligence?
While you likely do all necessary due diligence when hiring high-level employees and C-suite officers in your company, do you do that same due diligence when hiring housekeepers, nannies, tutors, drivers, and everyone else who may work in your personal staff? High net worth due diligence provides a high level of investigative due diligence to those that work in your household and with your family. Proper due diligence is critical in order to protect yourself and your family from scams, theft, fraud, and even blackmail. The individuals mentioned above have more access to your personal life and property than the typical employee, so you want to make certain they’re trustworthy. Hiring the wrong person can result in extortion, the loss of valuables, and other horrible outcomes. One important way of protecting yourself from these situations is to make certain you’re hiring the right people. That’s where Infortal’s high net worth due diligence process can help. If you have millions in personal assets, you need to protect yourself.
Why Should You Perform Due Diligence on these Individuals?
When you hire someone to work in your home, you’re often giving them unsupervised access to all of your personal property. This includes potential access to things such as your personal computer and other electronics, files, passports, and many other documents that could include personally-identifying information. This includes personal information about your spouse, children, and potentially other family members. With that information, they could steal your identity, commit fraud using your financial information, or coerce you into paying them large sums of money. Even if they don’t steal information, they could take any of the valuables you have in your home. This includes jewelry, expensive electronics, art, and anything else they could easily remove from the home.
There are a number of other risks involved in not doing due diligence on these individuals, including the following:
- Financial scandals that damage your reputation.
- PR nightmares that could affect your business profile.
- Access to your home or information could be sold to others you haven’t vetted.
- Embezzlement and other misuse of funds or your personal property.
Do You Need to Perform Due Diligence on Your Staff?
It is highly recommended that individuals with a high net worth perform due diligence on their staff. If your annual income falls between $2 million or $100 million a year, you certainly fall into this category and can have some large exposure if your staff is not properly vetted.
Family fund offices can also heavily benefit from high net worth due diligence. As a family funds office, you are charged with making certain high net worth individuals’ families are taken care of and are often tasked with securing staff for their home and helping with travel and long-term stays overseas. You may need to hire staff in multiple countries or locations, and every one of those individuals should be vetted.
Executives, government officials, business owners, and others who have a high net worth will want to know that their homes and their families are secure. That’s what Infortal aims to do with our high net worth due diligence process. At the end of the day, after we’ve done our job and you’ve hired staff you can trust, you won’t have to worry about fraud, identity theft, or other scams perpetuated by your staff.
Who Should You Perform Due Diligence on?
There are many people you will want to perform due diligence on. Typically, anyone you hire who will work closely with you and your family or have access to your home should be fully vetted, including the following:
- Financial and other trusted advisors
- Executive administrators
- Housekeepers
- Personal assistants
- Tutors
- Drivers and pilots
- Chefs
- Physical therapists
- Nurses and other caregivers
- Personal trainers
- Landscapers
What Could Go Wrong
US businesses lose up to $110 million a day due to employee-related crimes.
What could happen if you hire an individual without doing your due diligence? Even if they appear to be trustworthy from the beginning, being around high-value objects and having access to highly sensitive information every day can wear people down. If they are facing large amounts of debt or are under other types of stress, the urge to “solve” those problems by stealing or committing fraud may start to seem more and more attractive. Even those who aren’t under such stress may eventually be tempted. Here are some of the ways hiring someone without doing your due diligence could harm you.
Identity theft has continued to be a serious issue for millions of people a year. Those who have a large number of assets are an especially tempting target. Even if someone is only able to open a credit card in your name for a few days, they can still do a large amount of damage. If this theft is someone like a personal assistant or financial advisor, they may be able to hide this line of credit and their purchases for months or even years.
Property theft, of course, is another obvious risk of hiring unscrupulous individuals. Even if you live modestly, you may still have a reserve of cash on hand. It can be very easy to slip things such as expensive phones, tablets, jewelry, watches, and other items into a pocket or bag. In addition to stealing property, several celebrities have been in the news due to a trusted employee stealing their pets. They attempted to coerce these celebrities into paying for the return of their beloved animals.
If you hire a nanny, au pair, or other caretakers for your young children or for a family member who is disabled, you want to make certain that individual is trustworthy. Abuse by caretakers is, sadly, not uncommon. Whether it’s child abuse, elderly abuse, or abuse done to those with disabilities, it is something you must be concerned about. This abuse isn’t always physical or sexual in nature, either.
The caretaker could attempt to coerce your loved one into giving them gifts or money. They could also present your family member with documents to sign or ask them questions about your personal information or where you keep specific possessions or documents. Often, these individuals become trusted friends with your loved ones before they begin implementing their plans. By this point, they don’t need to coerce your loved one at all. They can simply ask for what they want and, because they’re seen as trustworthy by the individual they’re taking care of, they get it.
Con artists may not necessarily come into your home and steal items or take personal information, but they may have other ways of extorting cash. Some will work for you for weeks or even months, gaining your trust and the trust of your family. Then they will stage an accident and claim that they were hurt while doing work for you. Some of these con artists are so well-versed in fraud that they can injure themselves in such a way that will fool medical professionals and court officials. You may find yourself paying out a large sum of money to someone without ever realizing they’ve conned you.
Trusted advisors, especially those with access to your accounts, can easily embezzle funds without you realizing it. They may do this by redirecting money designated to pay taxes or other payments to their own accounts. This could result in the IRS investigating your accounts and fining you rather than your advisor. In some cases, advisors embezzle funds and then resign. By the time you discover what they’ve done, they have left the state or country. Advisors who have access to any corporate accounts could embezzle from the company, leading to professional fines and investigations into your business.
In addition to having your property or identity stolen, your reputation is also going to be damaged. It can be very difficult to prevent something like a household employee stealing your identity or abusing one of your family members from making the news, especially when the police get involved. This is going to damage both your personal and professional reputations. It can make it difficult to find new hires because you may have more con artists and others who see you as an easy target. On the other hand, you may have fewer applicants because few people will want to work in an environment that may employ shady individuals.
Your professional peers may also lose some respect for you. They may be wary of entering into any business dealings with you and your company. If you fail to do your due diligence on those who are working in your home, they may assume that you have also failed to fully vet your executives and others who work for you.
How Infortal Handles High Net Worth Due Diligence
When you partner with Infortal to perform due diligence on those you’re hiring for your household, we perform a number of background checks and other types of verification. This is more than a standard employment background check. Other companies’ “standard employment background checks” typically only look at a limited number of items, including employment history, criminal records, vehicle license records, and credit history. While this can certainly highlight some areas of concern, it also leaves a lot of information out. You can find someone with a perfect standard background check who has dozens of red flags that were not discovered.
Only 23% of standard employment background checks found problems.
49% of Infortal Due Diligence found Significant Red Flags!
Infortal will vet information in a wide number of ways. We will look at criminal records, of course, but we won’t just look at convictions. We will also look at cases that were dismissed as well as arrest records. We will dig into civil cases to determine if the individual is litigious. If they have brought a number of lawsuits against others, especially against employers, they could be a litigious individual and may not be someone you want working in your household.
We also look at interstate bankruptcies and other cases that may have occurred in other states or even other countries. Standard background checks may only look at records in the state the individual currently resides in, especially if they have lived in this state for several years. They may have a string of bankruptcies and other activities in other states. Few people think to check other countries or even know how to access those records. Infortal will look into someone’s activities in every area they have lived in to check for dubious events. We also look into SEC violations and other financial fines or penalties the individual may have incurred.
Often, con artists and thieves will use multiple identities and aliases. We will check all of an individual’s credentials, educational history, and their previous employment history. This is another area where researching interstate databases and information from other countries can uncover contradictions in a person’s history or identity.
When we complete our due diligence on an individual who you are considering for a position on your personal staff, you will have a well-rounded view of who they are. If they have represented themselves truthfully, you will have confirmation that they are someone you can hire to work in your home. If they have not, you will have the information needed to consider if they are someone you want to take a chance on. At Infortal, we arm our clients with the knowledge they need to make an informed decision. One civil suit against an employer where the individual was clearly in the right may not be a red flag. Multiple civil suits, however, may indicate an individual isn’t as trustworthy as they appeared to be.
Partner with Infortal Today to start Due Diligence on your new hires
If you’re preparing to hire a new personal chef, driver, tutor, or any other household staff member, you want to protect yourself. A standard background check is a start, but there are many warning signs that this superficial process simply will not uncover. The people you invite to work in your home need to be individuals you can trust implicitly. You need to know if they have done anything that could put you or your family at risk, and for that, you need a more thorough look at their history. That’s what Infortal provides. Whether you’re an executive who has just reached the point of needing to hire personal staff, or you have a Family Office representing you, you can never be too safe.
Let Infortal provide you with the information you need to make a fully-informed decision about a new hire. Contact us today at 1-408-298-9700 to learn more about our high net worth due diligence process.