The group's board is designed to help RFO manage areas such as complex family structures.

Raffles Family Office has appointed inaugural members of its newly-created Independent Advisory Board.

The inaugural members are Christina Lau from LeeKumKee Health Product Group’s Infinitus Property Investment and David Chang, a senior advisor to Franklin Templeton for the Greater China region, the Hong Kong-based firm said in a statement yesterday.

The advisors will help RFO with engagements involving highly complex family structures. They will also help identify philanthropic opportunities for clients and advise on the company’s future development plans.

The members’ dispute-resolution services will complement RFO’s suite of family governance solutions which cover matters such as crafting constitutions for setting up and overseeing investment and asset allocation protocols.

The philanthropic services area will tap into members’ network of relationships with charitable organisations across Asia, and use their knowledge about how to spot and evaluate suitable recipients for donations.

“As someone who has spent most of her career building, managing and being part of a family-owned business, I am delighted to be able to share my experience in partnership with Raffles," Lau said.

A former risk assurance partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte, Lau has more than 15 years of IT management experience and 20 years of professional consulting experience. She has advised numerous companies in the banking, asset management, insurance, telecom, technology and real estate sectors and has specialised in the areas of enterprise risk management; resilience; internal auditing; due diligence; project risk management; business and technology alignment; and governance, risk and compliance.

Lau has worked in Beijing, Macau and Sydney as well as Hong Kong, where she is based, providing advisory services related to ESG and resilience, among others.

Chang is a senior advisor at Franklin Templeton Investments, where he was previously chief executive and regional head for Greater China, and had a tenure of over 20 years. He has also served in supervisory roles at various special educational needs schools for more than a decade.

Besides its Hong Kong HQ, RFO has a presence across Asia, including mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore.

Raffles Family Office last September announced that it had entered a three-year partnership with Italian football club Juventus, another example of how banks and wealth managers promote brands via sports connections. In August last year, the firm appointed Edward Sit as executive drector and Greater China corporate development head. Sit, who will split his time between Hong Kong and mainland China, previously worked at Hong Kong Exchange & Clearning, where he was vice president in charge of its global client development area. That appointment follows three senior hires at RFO in the first half of this year including Stella Kong as MD, Greater China, Simon Lints as strategic advisor, and Paul Tay as senior vice president, trading and advisory.