For private bankersand wealth managers.

Private bankers often hear about succession before anyone else does. It rarely arrives as an agenda item. It comes at the end of a portfolio review, or over lunch, in a sentence the founder did not plan to say.

What do you see from the banker’s seat?

From your side of the table, the pattern tends to look like this.

• The relationship still runs through the founder. The successor attends meetings, but the founder answers the questions that matter, and your credit and relationship colleagues still call the founder when something needs deciding.
• The successor is well educated and well briefed. They may have attended your bank’s next-generation program. They understand the balance sheet. Yet in a meeting with the family, they defer.
• The handover date keeps moving. The founder speaks about stepping back in two years, and has been saying so for some time.
• The worry comes out sideways. “They know the business. I am not sure the board will follow them.” That is not a question about wealth, and you know it.

Your firm has prepared the structure and the assets. What it is not set up to prepare is how the successor carries a board, a senior team and a family table. Why the bank still wants the founder looks at the same gap from the family’s side.

Where does Second Chair™ fit, and where does it not?

Second Chair™ prepares one person: the successor who has decided to take the role. Over six months it works on how they lead the board, the senior team and the family, built around the real events on their calendar.

It does not touch your territory.

• No investment advice and no view on how the family’s wealth is managed.
• No tax, legal or structuring advice. Trusts, ownership and estate questions stay with the family’s lawyers and accountants.
• No succession planning or governance design. Second Chair™ works alongside whoever is doing that work.
• No decision on whether the successor should lead. The work begins once that is settled.

A bank’s next-generation program and Second Chair™ do different jobs. Group programs build knowledge and networks across many families. This is private, one to one, and aimed at one handover. What a bank’s next-generation program covers sets out where each fits.

When is a referral a good fit?

A referral tends to fit when most of these are true:

• There is a family business, with a parent or current leader still present.
• There is one successor, roughly 25 to 45, who has decided to take the role.
• The handover is real: a leadership or board role within one to three years.
• The gap is authority, not knowledge. The successor knows the numbers and still loses the room.
• The family wants change, not a report on readiness.

It does not fit when the successor is undecided, when the family is really asking for investment, tax or legal help, or when the founder wants a verdict to file. How Second Chair™ decides whether a family is a fit goes through each case.

How does a referral work?

Your client relationship comes first, so the process is built to leave control with the family.

1. Raise it as an option. Ask the founder what they would need to see to feel confident about the handover, and mention that some families use a coach who works one to one with the successor.
2. Let the family decide. The simplest route is to give the founder the site and let them make contact themselves.
3. If you make the introduction, agree it first. Before naming the family, the business or the situation, agree with the client what they are comfortable sharing, and follow your firm’s policies on client information and third-party introductions.
4. Use the request form. It has an option for “a family office or private banker”. Only name and email are required. The business, the timing and the concern are optional.

Nikola Jovanović reads every request himself. Where there is a fit, he replies within three business days with a personal email and a one-time link to arrange a private conversation. There is no public calendar.

If you would rather understand the approach before mentioning it to anyone, a conversation with Nikola directly is a sensible first step. How advisors refer a family to a coach covers the process in more detail, including how to check any coach before your name goes with the recommendation.

How is discretion handled?

Discretion matters in your world as much as in this one.

• Every engagement begins under a mutual NDA.
• Second Chair™ does not publish case studies and does not name the families it works with.
• The parent receives a monthly briefing on progress and priorities. What the successor says in sessions stays between coach and successor.
• Requests sent through the site are held in confidence and never shared.

For a client, that means a referral from you does not become a story anyone else hears. Is successor coaching confidential? explains how confidentiality works in each direction.

What should the family know first?

If the conversation goes further, a few facts save time. The program runs for six months: a private diagnostic, 24 weekly one-to-one sessions, a monthly briefing for the parent, and a facilitated handover session that ends in a signed Handover Charter. Engagements begin at $50,000, paid in full by the family or the company. There is no guarantee and no refund.

To discuss a family, or the approach itself, request a private conversation. The Handover Charter and what advisors should recommend when the successor is not ready are useful to pass on.