The mobile-messaging application WhatsApp is displayed on an Apple iPhoneBrent Lewin | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesFor investment firms of the ultra rich, WhatsApp is a one-stop shop for everything from vetting deals to finding the best surgeons. Sam Nallen Copley, an investment advisor at a London-based family office, runs a 970-person WhatsApp group for single-family offices and has seen it all, from verifying credentials to finding co-investors to selling multimillion-dollar collections of dinosaur bones and Pokémon cards.”If I need something at any time of day, I can message nearly 1,000 people about a new bitcoin fund or ask who’s the best tax lawyer in Germany,” he said. Nallen Copley uses WhatsApp to organize meetups for the single-family office network he runs, Family Office Social.The most valuable benefit is ferreting out scammers pitching deals, which is a common issue for family offices, Nallen Copley said.”The family office space is the easiest area of finance to be a fake in. If someone turns up and says, ‘Hey, I’m worth a billion dollars in bitcoin,’ it’s very hard to prove one way or another,” he said. “Now the group is sufficiently large and powerful in the sense that we can sense check most things. Has anyone heard of this person? Has anyone ever done a deal with this person? If the answer is no, it will be quite suspicious.”Family office professionals told Inside Wealth that WhatsApp is convenient for messaging on the go and with people in different time zones. They also appreciate its privacy and exclusivity, as WhatsApp messages are encrypted and you can only message other users with their phone number. Many of these groups, including Nallen Copley’s, have strict ground rules against pitching products and deals and gatekeep against vendors or brokers. While financial firms like investment banks face steep fines for using WhatsApp, family offices generally aren’t subject to the same regulatory restrictions. Robin Lauber, a principal of a Swiss family office, i …
