Treasury Policy

This document sets out the treasury policy of the family office and its related vehicles. It is written to be read by the principal, the committee, the desk, the custodian, the auditor, and the trustee. It is the working version of how money is held, moved, hedged, and reported. Where it is silent on a question, the answer is that the question must be raised at the next investment committee cycle and resolved in writing before any action is taken. The aim of the document is to remove the need for one-off judgement at the moment a transaction is being booked.

The policy covers three things, and three things only. First, the operating rules for cash and short-dated credit across the household treasury and the office treasury, in their reporting currencies and in their operating currencies. Second, the rules for foreign exchange: the corridors the desk is authorised to operate within, the trigger thresholds that require committee review, and the treatment of realised and unrealised FX in the quarterly report. Third, the rules for counterparty exposure: the approved universe, the limits per counterparty, the approval rights for new counterparties, and the cadence at which the universe is reviewed. Anything that does not fall inside these three is outside the scope of this document and is governed by the investment policy statement, the mandate brief, or a specific committee minute. The intent is to leave as little as possible to judgement at the moment a transaction is booked. Where judgement cannot be removed, the rule names the escalation: who is informed, by when, in what form, and on whose authority the decision is taken. The policy is read alongside three other documents and never in isolation. The mandate brief is the upstream record of how the family and the desk have agreed the office should operate; where this policy and the mandate brief diverge, the brief is revisited and the policy is updated, in that order. The investment policy statement is the upstream record of how the portfolio is constructed and rebalanced; where this policy and the statement appear to overlap on cash and on currency, the statement governs the asset allocation and this policy governs the operating layer underneath it. Together with the annual review minute, these documents form the operating record of the office for the year. Each is dated, signed, and held in the same secure location; each is recoverable on request within one business day by the principal, the committee, the auditor, and the trustee.

Governance is layered. The principal sets the appetite and signs the policy. The committee approves changes to the policy, approves exceptions, and reviews the quarterly report. The desk operates the policy inside the corridors and inside the limits, and reports any breach, near-breach, or planned exception to the committee in writing within two business days. The custodian and the administrator are expected to operate inside the instructions the desk issues under the policy; where an instruction is outside the policy, they are expected to refuse and to record the refusal. The auditor reads the policy as the authoritative reference for the year-end review; deviations without a recorded waiver are treated as findings. The trustee, where one is appointed, reads the policy as the statement of how the office operates the assets in trust, and is given a copy of every quarterly letter. The document is signed once a year, after the annual review, regardless of whether anything has changed. A quiet year is still a signature. The committee charter sits outside this document and is the source of authority for the changes that may be made to the policy without a further signature from the principal; the charter and the policy are reviewed together at the annual meeting, and any change to one is followed by a corresponding review of the other.